A Study in Sussex Part 12: Pointless at Purley

In this part of our ongoing series we look at a critical set of points north of Purley station and what role they might play in a future Brighton Main Line. It is also a convenient time to look at the issue of trying to keep the line open between South Croydon Junction and Coulsdon, with the Christmas engineering works showing what happens when this is not possible.

Switching between the fast and slow at Purley

There is a set of points north of Purley station that look complicated when viewed on Carto Metro or the Open Train Times diagram, but in essence they can be split into two functions. One group is to do with the two slow lines north of the station serving four platforms (3-6) at Purley and accessing the aggregates yard and siding. These are in continual use. The other group is simply to enable up trains to move from the up slow to the up fast and down trains to move from the down fast to the down slow. These were once important but not vital and are less used now – but may have more of a role in future.

Points enabling switching between fast and slow lines at Purley

The latter-described points at Purley weren’t going to be part of our story. However, potential future issues at Windmill Bridge Junction with southbound (down) trains from Victoria make us wonder whether these points might actually become more important in the years to come. They are about to be renewed, so it is clear that they must play some role. The question is what.

The complex sets of points to the north of Purley station as seen from platform 5

The points to the north of Purley station have a particularly unfortunate history. Logically, from around 1983-84 onwards when the arrangement of fast and slow lines through Purley was changed, it would have made a lot of sense for trains going to London that called at Purley before becoming fast from Purley to East Croydon to use the fast lines.

Purley Train Crash

At the time of the Purley rail crash it was normal for trains from Horsham, having called at platform 3, to be switched from the slow line to the fast – at least in the off-peak. If all trains ran to time then fast trains would not be delayed. If they were only a little late then the following fast train might have to slow down and have restrictive signals (yellows), but would probably not have to come to a complete stand. Only if the train from Horsham was slightly delayed and the following fast train running slightly early would the fast train need to come to a complete stop.

On Saturday 4th March 1989, this situation occurred and the critical protecting signal, signal 168, at the northern end of platform 1 was set to red to tell the approaching fast train to stop. Unfortunately, the driver was unprepared for the red signal. In subsequent evidence to the inspecting officer he was adamant that he saw a double yellow, as he was expecting to, at the signal before signal 168. It was clear he was either mistaken or he lied.

The inevitable result was that the fast train ran into the back of the train from Horsham. Five people lost their lives and 88 were injured. Around that time the occasional train crash with a small loss of life was regarded as normal and unavoidable, but a combination of events meant that the Purley train crash finally called into question the ability of British Rail to run trains safely.

A succession of railway accidents

The crash occurred less than three months after the Clapham rail crash, by far the worst railway accident for three decades. Things got worse less than 48 hours later when there were further fatalities at Bellgrove in Glasgow – also due to a driver passing a signal at danger (albeit in completely different circumstances). A fear gripped the British Railways Board which urged the drivers to drive more “defensively” which, of course, had a consequential effect on reliability. Many also argued that this approach was actually counter-productive – because out-of-course working increased the likelihood of incidents and because drivers would be encountering yellow signals more often, which led to the known danger of subconscious cancellation of the Automatic Warning System (AWS) device.

Blame

The driver at Purley pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter and endangering life. This was a highly unusual as juries are usually very reluctant to convict in “there, but for the grace of god, go I” type situations. The accident report also put the blame on the driver, but it did also recommend a banner repeater for signal 168 to give the driver further advanced warning. The report did note that there had been four previous SPADs (signal passed at danger) at this location in the previous five years, but clearly the inspecting officer thought his recommendation of a banner repeater signal would be sufficient in preventing SPADs at this location in future.

Because of the court proceedings, publication of the report was delayed in case it could adversely influence the jury. As a consequence, the fact that the location was a SPAD hotspot only came to light after sentencing. Although the driver had already served his prison sentence he decided to appeal on the grounds that had the information been available at the time he would not have accepted the advice to plead guilty – indeed the advice itself may even have been different. Lord Justice Latham agreed and whilst he considered that a jury may still have found the driver negligent, they may well have decided he had not been negligent to an extent that justified the imposition of criminal sanctions.

Consequences

All this may initially seem irrelevant, but one of the truths of modern railway operations is that if you get SPADs at a signal, especially ones with potentially serious consequences, you do something about it. A subsequent SPAD at the same location two years later – despite the addition of the banner repeater – clearly meant that more had to be done.

The solution was a procedure normally only used for royal trains – “Grove Arrangements” – whereby trains are stopped at the signal prior to the one normally used for protecting junctions or preceding trains. This solved the SPAD problem, but it naturally meant that using the crossover greatly increased the chance of delaying a following train. This, perhaps combined with the knowledge that the points were worn out, meant that the crossover only saw limited use. Typically this was for trains in the early hours when engineering work forced them to switch tracks rather than call at platform 1 or 2 at Purley. Platform 1 has its own separate entrance which is normally locked. It also probably has the least used lift on the rail network. Platform 2 at Purley is now protected by an anti-suicide fence dividing platforms 2 and 3, so it is also inconvenient to stop trains there when it can be avoided as it involves opening up the access gates.

TPWS to the rescue

The accident report acknowledged the fact that the British Railways Board had already agreed to proceed with the development and installation of “an ATP system” (Automatic Train Protection). For many years now we have had this in the form of TPWS (Train Protection and Warning System). TPWS renders the post-accident precautions at Purley redundant – but it took a long time, some cost, and (no doubt) a thorough safety case report to remove the additional restricting protection.

The future use for the crossovers at Purley

As indicated in our articles on East Croydon, the proposed arrangements for the reorganisation of the junction at Windmill Bridge will considerably reduce, if not eliminate, conflict in a northbound direction, but could actually make things worse southbound for the few peak hour fast trains from Victoria. It may be that in future southbound fast services from Victoria that stop at platform 4 at Purley will be routed on fast lines southbound between Windmill Bridge and Purley. This is, in fact, what used to happen until a few years ago. It is also possible, but less likely, that fast trains to Purley from Victoria that continue to Caterham or Tattenham Corner could, in the next decade, use the fast line from Windmill Bridge to just outside Purley and then call at platform 5 or 6.

Depending on the final arrangements for Windmill Bridge Junction, a move to route the few southbound fast trains from Victoria that stop at Purley could make sense in future. Existing restrictions (such as limited fast platforms at East Croydon) will have been resolved and the move can be made without disrupting northbound trains on the up slow line too much as they would either be slowing down to call at Purley or waiting in a platform anyway. The worst that would happen would be a short delay to the departure of the northbound train.

If the southbound trains cross from fast to slow then, if it fits in with the timetable and the service can be run sufficiently punctually, it would make some sense for the relevant northbound trains to cross from slow to fast at the same time.

Problems in keeping the railway open

Critical sections of the Brighton Main Line with no convenient alternative route. Note: Smitham is now called Coulsdon Town.

South of South Croydon Junction the Brighton Main Line ‘only’ has four tracks. North of Windmill Bridge there are four tracks to Victoria and four to London Bridge. Through East Croydon there are six tracks and from there to South Croydon there are five. With five tracks, even if you need to be working on two of them and need two more closed for the safety of workers, you should usually be able to keep one line open. That’s enough to allow services to continue throughout the night whilst work is taking place. Once you get down to four though then things start to become problematic. Going further south, beyond Stoat’s Nest Junction just south of Purley, the route divides into two before rejoining south of Redhill. At Purley the Caterham and Tattenham Corner branches leave the main line, so you could argue that South Croydon Junction to Purley station is the most critical part of the railway – and a section where you really, really do not want to have to do major engineering work on all lines.

On a more positive note, the line in this area has less of an issue as regards capacity now we are further from central London and some services have already diverged away from the main line. The fast lines are generally not hampered by trains calling at stations and so between East Croydon and Gatwick they can pretty much handle anything thrown at them. The slow lines reduce from three to two tracks at South Croydon Junction, but then it also has a reduced number of trains to support there. There is not a fundamental capacity issue on the slow lines between South Croydon and Purley, although a mixture of trains stopping and not stopping at Purley Oaks can lead to slight delays. This is not helped by Purley Oaks slow platforms being only eight cars long so SDO needs to be used on longer trains.

Soled and Heeled too many times

Around thirty years ago a British Rail manager commented that the problem with the Brighton Line was that it had been soled and heeled too many times. The line was changed from double track to quadruple track in the 1890s and it is probably fair to say that when it comes to the civil engineering infrastructure and permanent way it has been almost constantly patched and repaired since then. It has certainly never properly been reballasted from the base of the formation upwards – something now known to give a good 25 years of life in the track base (not the track itself) without major work being necessary, as long as it is done properly. A “scrape” is quicker, of course, but it may well only give you ten years before having to repeat the process.

Doing things properly, however, takes time. One of the causes of the problems at King’s Cross last Christmas was a commitment to do the job properly and not revert to scraping (as was in the contingency plan) when it was realised that the schedule was slipping.

The reluctance to do a job properly on the Brighton Main Line has almost certainly been at least in part due to a considerable reluctance to close it for any length of time – understandable when you serve Gatwick Airport. In recent years there has been a change in attitude as the acceptance grows that with a 7-day railway there is simply no real quiet time during the week to do maintenance. With the recognition that any substantial engineering works is going to be very disruptive, support has been moving towards big blockades at quieter times of the year which will at least sort out the job properly.

The Christmas 2013 big blockade

Between Christmas 2013 and New Year 2014 Network Rail put the idea of a big blockade into practice when renewing a total of 16 points at Stoat’s Nest Junction just south of Purley. Despite absolutely appalling weather (remember what happened at Dawlish a couple of months later) the work was completed on time although it very nearly got called off at the last moment. The reasons for considering postponement have never been given, but the need for workers to fix problems elsewhere, the closure of a diversion route due to a landslip and the fear of not being able to complete the works on time may have all been factors.

A quiet moment at Coulsdon Town in 2013, with staff getting a well deserved few minutes of peace before the next busloads arrive

It was hard to fault the rail replacement service arrangements made in 2013. These worked extremely well despite being challenged by the closure of the line from Horsham to Dorking due to a landslip – a limited train service from London to Gatwick via this roundabout route had initially been planned. A further challenge presented itself after Christmas when a planned reopening of the line from Gatwick Airport southwards to Three Bridges was delayed because some simultaneous work to bring extra platforms into use at Gatwick was delayed by the awful weather. Nevertheless, this too was successfully surmounted.

A very convenient interchange from rail replacement bus to train at Coulsdon Town

The rail replacement plan was clever, well thought out, well publicised and well executed with plenty of staff available to assist. The East Grinstead route was used as the primary route for Gatwick services and beyond with rail replacement coaches non-stop from East Grinstead to Gatwick. As an alternative there was a quarter hourly fast service to Coulsdon Town where buses could take the A23 and M23 to reach both Gatwick and Three Bridges non-stop from outside the station. All arrivals from London involved stepping off platform 2, walking a few yards and then generally straight onto a rail replacement bus with plenty of luggage space. Rail departures weren’t always quite as convenient, with half the trains departing from platform 1 and half from platform 2. There was also a replacement stopping service via Redhill from a dedicated stop in Coulsdon High St – the relevant traffic order had been sought and the parking bays closed. Everything, including the destination of replacement buses, was clearly indicated and well publicised in advance.

Christmas 2015 – New Year

This Christmas, the sets of points north of Purley station are being replaced. With the success of two years previous one might think this would be easy. Again there are 16 points due to be replaced. More inconveniently, the opportunity has been taken to replace a bridge from 30th December to 4th January (more on this later) on the Brighton Main Line south of Purley, which means that all engineering trains need to come from and depart to the north during this period. Nevertheless, from the engineering perspective, there is no reason to believe that this work will not be as successful as it was two years ago.

News report on December 28th 2015 mainly about Purley point replacement works

What’s going on?

Where things may go wrong is with the alternative arrangements. Someone unfamiliar with the area might think that it shouldn’t be too bad with similar arrangements in place as before. Unfortunately this is not the case as Purley station will not see any passenger trains.

With Purley unable to have a railway service this means that both the Tattenham Corner and Caterham Branches can’t run. Even if they could run to Purley without getting in the way of the engineering works (and assuming Southern could find the staff to run them) the bridge reconstruction would mean that from December 30th the trains would be isolated with no means of getting to or from any depot.

Worse still the plan seems to involve running replacement bus services all the way to East Croydon. Not only is this around four miles from Coulsdon Town (three miles from Purley) it is going to be along a congested route badly affected by the traffic caused by the post-Christmas sales. No attempt has been made to focus on getting Caterham passengers to Upper Warlingham on the East Grinstead line (still open) where there will be a service. The intention seems to be to bus them all the way to East Croydon.

East Croydon is not the ideal location for replacement bus services to start or finish and the set down and pick up points are not very convenient. The drop off point for passengers laden with luggage is in Cherry Orchard Road which, despite its charming name, is not really a user-friendly place to dump people who need to get to East Croydon station. At least it does separate passenger flows by having arriving passengers using the old station foot overbridge with ramps at the south end of the station and departing passengers using the new bridge which has lifts.

Sheltering the queues for the rail replacement buses to keep dry the hordes of passengers that never came

There are a couple of thoughtful innovations in the rail replacement plan. Buses to East Croydon will not go through a time-consuming diversion to serve Purley station – in the other direction they will stop close to the station but there is very little time penalty in doing this. Replacement buses from Purley to Tattenham Corner will continue to Epsom Station for direct trains to and from London.

Curiously, passengers to East Croydon from the Tattenham Corner branch are advised by journey planner to change at Coulsdon Town for a second bus to East Croydon but in the other direction they are advised to change at Purley. It is hard to know whether this is just an artefact of journey planner (which suggests you change at the first convenient place) or whether it has actually been thought through. It is highly likely that it would be better if Coulsdon Town was used in both directions, but with details of what the exact arrangements are rather sketchy it is hard to be sure. Then again, changing at Purley means more choice of buses with the East Croydon – Caterham buses being an alternative to the Redhill buses so who knows where the best place to change is?

Publicity or lack thereof

What is concerning is the lack of publicity for this closure and, until very recently, the total absence of any real detail – such as where the replacement buses stop – except for those at Purley and East Croydon. For the most part the stations involved have not had any publicity in the form of either posters or replacement timetables to hand out. The relevant timetables with the latest timetable change on December 13th make no mention of this work starting less than two weeks after that timetable commences. The situation is improving but, as appears to be modern practice, there is very little detailed written or online information and a total reliance appears to be place on National Rail’s Journey Planner.

As a public service announcement we can tell you what seems to be impossible to find out online and tell you that the proposed replacement bus services (according to the posters that Network Rail have placed on the fencing at their work site) will be:

In fact that is slightly wrong because the Epsom service will start from Purley.

So far the public have not been given any indication of which services serve which stations but it is presumed that they mimic the rail services they replace. The buses do appear on National Rail’s journey planner but do not include calling points so it is hard to work out exactly what is going on.

Bridge Replacement

It is not unusual for advantage to be taken to do engineering works at other sites already affected by major works. In this case Network Rail have decided to deal with a bridge that is long overdue for replacement. This is the rail-over-road bridge at Old Lodge Lane very close to Reedham station. There is another bridge, very close by, that takes the Tattenham Corner branch over the road but this is unaffected by the works.

Mitigating measures against bridge strikes – but not a permanent solution

Because the Brighton Main Line was generally built double track and then widened to quadruple track, most bridges over roads are two (or more) separate structures. This makes replacement slightly easier. Furthermore the older one in such instances is generally masonry and the newer one steel. It is thus usually only the masonry one that needs replacing. In many cases, as here, the need to replace it is partly down to repeated bridge strikes. The steel ones, having more clearance, tend to suffer less from this.

In the case of Old Lodge Lane bridge, the construction is unusual with the original masonry bridge being extended widthways by a steel construction. This means the whole bridge needs replacing. What has been disappointing is the lack of advance publicity given before closing a fairly major road in order to facilitate this. Worse still, the 455 bus route has been diverted with absolutely no publicity on any of the many stops not currently being served.

Start of works for a temporary water diversion and construction of temporary base for a crane

The work involved is a big job and Network Rail must hope there are not too many more like this on such a critical section of the Brighton Line. The steel section of the bridge will require a crane to remove and there needs to be a crash deck on the highway for when the masonry arch is reduced to rubble. This means that a suitable base has to be built for the crane and the water supply has to be temporarily diverted by the local water company in case the reconstruction causes a cracking of the iron water pipe. The new bridge will also be craned in, which means continuous working from late December 30th to the early hours of January 4th.

Advance preparations on the afternoon of 23rd December 2015

At least, after the work is done, it should be possible for the 13′ 6” height restriction to be raised by at least 12 inches which would mean that London Buses would be able to run double-decker buses on route 455, though at this end of the route it is very quiet.

London Reconnections rolling news – almost

In a departure from our normal practice, we hope to be able to prove updates to this story should anything relevant and significant happen in the next two weeks. In 2016 we will be diverting attention away from the Brighton Main Line but still intend to continue with a handful of articles during the year in order to cover the line down to Brighton. 2016 should also be the year when we finally get beyond the London boundary with this series.

Update: Of Mice and Men

Despite earlier foreboding it was clear by Sunday the 27th December that the replacement buses between East Croydon and Redhill/Caterham and Purley – Epsom were working tolerably well if little used. In general, there were plenty of staff to assist at Purley, and, doubtless, at East Croydon and Redhill but elsewhere passengers were left to fend for themselves. By the 28th the expected delays on the road started appearing with bus schedules becoming a work of fiction.

It is clear that the best laid plans often go astray. The A23 Purley Way and the Brighton Road direct between Croydon and Purley merge at Purley. About a mile south of Purley the Coulsdon Bypass means that there is once again an alternative route – either on the main A23 or through Coulsdon town centre. South from the Coulsdon Bypass much of the road is dual carriageway before most of the traffic leaves to join the M23 at Hooley. So, probably the last thing you would want is a blocked main road midway between Purley and Coulsdon.

Southern (Gas Networks) delays passengers

It is therefore most unfortunate that Southern Gas Networks decided that they needed to do some emergency gas repairs at precisely such a location as described above. The only saving grace was that they only closed half the road and installed temporary traffic lights. Nevertheless this could mean delays of at least 10 minutes southbound and generally much longer northbound. As traffic was moving slower than walking speed it would have been possible for passengers without luggage to get off the rail replacement bus, start walking and have a good chance of catching up with the previous bus.

Emergency Gas Works on the A23 at Smitham Downs Road junction

On occasions like this it must be very frustrating for the organisers of rail replacement buses to have an incident completely outside their control make the situation much worse than it need to have been. They are probably unaware of this but, at the junction in question, Southern Gas Networks (SGN) are often digging up the road but generally at this location they do this at night and reinstate it in time for the morning peak period. It is hard not to be cynical as to how much of an emergency this was and that it didn’t happen on Christmas Day or the day after when it would have been far less inconvenient for the travelling public if not for SGN and their employees. To put it another way, it is hard not to be suspicious and be convinced that this was a “planned emergency” and that Network Rail are not the only ones who schedule disruptive work to be carried out between Christmas and the New Year.

Southern bus stop dolly at Coulsdon Town and traffic queues merging

What, of course, makes this so much worse is that this is not factored into the planning – not that much could be done about it. It would at least be possible to warn passengers (and indeed drivers) that their journey could take even longer than planned. Rail replacement bus schedules could have been amended to be more realistic and some alternative options considered or reconsidered. As it is there is nothing to tell passengers to also allow time for delays due to this emergency work. According to the TfL traffic website listing details for the A23 the work by SGN will take from Monday 28th to Wednesday 30th. You can get also a map of the specific incident and even click on it to look at the traffic cameras in the area. Needless to say National Rail Journey Planner does not reflect this and allows just 8 minutes for a rail replacement bus along the Brighton Road from Purley to Coulsdon Town.

What has happened is unfortunate but it is almost certain to cause passengers to dread, even more than they do now, the spectre of the rail replacement bus service.

The foreshortening effect in the pictures reveals some interesting track quality issues, noteably in the Down Slow (and of course, the freight yard)

Southern Heights
23 December 2015 at 13:21

@PoP: When I read the last paragraph, I thought this article might have been written in 2014??? 😉
[ Got my 2015 and 2016 muddled. It was written recently but I am about a year behind my original schedule – albeit I didn’t intend there to be so many parts to the series. PoP]

I have slightly toned down the article as regards lack of publicity as the stations now have posters up warning of the work. They also have details locally of where the rail replacement buses stop. Nevertheless I have a horrible feeling this will all end in tears.

lmm
23 December 2015 at 14:01

Seems this article isn’t showing up in RSS? Maybe I just need to be patient, but thought it was worth mentioning.

Mark H
23 December 2015 at 15:13

Another excellent article.

Should the final heading say “rolling news” rather than “rolling new” ?

Snowy
23 December 2015 at 15:19

Thanks as ever for the clear explaination of the work, I hope this does go well as I suspect 2 Xmas work overruns in a row would lead to a considerable headache for Network Rails image.

I assume the lack of works at Holloway this year is to avoid any potential repeat embarrassment or has it been decided that works such as these at Purley are now more important and there aren’t enough resources for both?

ngh
23 December 2015 at 15:20

Re PoP.

The Bridge being replaced is currently responsible for 60mph speed restrictions for heavier trains (e.g. anything with a locomotive) these will be lifted on 4th Jan. The normal line speed on the slows is 80mph.

The currently speed limit for the ladder points north of Purley is 25mph for anything to/from fasts and 20mph for slows / branches (i.e. everything else).
The general plain line speeds are:
fasts 90mph,
slows 80mph
and CAT/TAT branches 20mph.

This means swapping any service to the fasts North of Purley really eats up capacity hence why the long term plan (post Windmill Bridge and would appear to be Fast/Slow swaps at Stoats Nest the speed limits are Up Slow to Up fast 70mph or Down Fast to Down Slow 60mph. So before any safety or signalling allowances are taken into account the line being crossed north of Purley is blocked for an extra 20+ seconds everytime (best case) instead of swapping at Stoats Nest. There is then the time taken to accelerate to line speed on the fasts 25–>90mph will be circa 125s. One additional extra fast path will have been eaten by the time it gets to up to 60mph at which point it will be near the 60mph limit at South Croydon the Service behind that will also need to be slowed.

The CP6/7 Sussex plans are looking at a down fast to down slow grade separation at Stoats Nest which will help solve the 60mph speed issue when swapping to the slows in the down direction there (as well as the more obvious blocking the Up Slow).

Mark Townend
23 December 2015 at 16:15

@ngh, 23 December 2015 at 15:20“The CP6/7 Sussex plans are looking at a down fast to down slow grade separation at Stoats Nest which will help solve the 60mph speed issue when swapping to the slows in the down direction there (as well as the more obvious blocking the Up Slow).”

A fast flat ladder junction at Stoats Nest for the Down Fast to Slow manoeuvre could work well in combination with an Up Slow to Fast chord connection at the flyover a little to the south if that was possible. That would always keep the Down Fast clear of directional conflicts, and would allow the Down Fast to Slow movement to cross in front of an Up Slow stopper waiting or drawing into Coulsdon South station. An additional LH crossover as well between the slows just south of that station could allow the crossing down train to stay on the Up Slow through the station and weave around a Down Slow stopping service waiting at or pulling in there. The signaller or ARS computer could set whichever specific route to minimise overall delay according to emerging conditions.

Chris C
23 December 2015 at 17:51

Thanks once again for another excellent article.

Why on earth NR and the ToCs don’t write articles like this on WHY the work needs doing and WHAT they are going to do I don’t know but they would be handy for local newspapers to publish rather than just the usual ‘engineering works moan should do them another time of year moan moan they don’t do this in etc etc’

If I see any pop up on my facebook I’ll rapidly link them to this.

Thanks should also be given to the many thousands of people who will be working on this and other projects on the network during the festive season.

Man of Kent
23 December 2015 at 19:34

Bus stopping patterns and journey times are available on Real Time Trains.

Jon
23 December 2015 at 20:31

Typically how often do platforms 1 and 2 at Purley open for use? Few days a week, few days a month or few days a year?

BeefQueen
23 December 2015 at 20:36

Legal error in the article, I think: if the driver pleaded guilty then a jury wouldn’t have been involved (juries only determine Crown Court cases where the defendant pleads not guilty).

This also suggests that the suggestion that the HMRI report was delayed due to ongoing legal proceedings may not be correct: there would have been no jury to be prejudiced by its publication.

It also appears that there were two appeals post-conviction: one that led to a reduction in sentence and a later appeal that led to the conviction being overturned. (Though I admit this was on Wikipedia so accuracy may not be all that…)

Jon
23 December 2015 at 20:39

Isn’t the point that, if he hadn’t have been advised to plead guilty, we don’t know how the potential jury would have treated the evidence?

As implied by Jon, publication was delayed because a potential jury could have been influenced by it. In the event the driver pleaded guilty thus avoiding a jury trial. Nevertheless, if he had pleaded not guilty then there would have been a jury trial and therefore Lord Justice Latham had to consider how a hypothetical jury would have considered the evidence that had newly come to light.

I have changed and occurrence of “the jury” to “a jury” to make this slightly clearer.

Platform 1 is only ever open, as far as I am aware, for engineering diversions off the slow line. Typically these are overnight services (midnight to 5 a.m.) but the very occasional Sunday has been known. I have used it about half a dozen times in 20 years.

Platform 2 is open for the same reasons as platform 1 but additionally a few (very few) trains call there – typically early morning trains which are really fasts with an additional stop at Purley. I have used it maybe two or three dozen times, usually late at night.

Rather annoyingly the far end of platforms 1 and 2 would give the best spot to take pictures of the points that are about to be worked on. Platform 3 is no good because it is slightly further to the south. However platforms 1 and 2 are generally inaccessible. Also rather annoyingly, when in the waiting room, as elsewhere, you get messages every few minutes about standing back at the edge of platform 2 because the approaching train does not stop there.

JonathanH
24 December 2015 at 00:12

There is a daily booked call at Purley platform 1 at 0626 by the 0536 Horsham to London Victoria which crosses slow to fast at Stoats Nest Junction.

Platform 2 sees a few trains calling in the early morning before they cross to the Redhill lines further south – 0602 / 0621 / 0702 from Victoria. Strangely Redhill has a better southbound service from Victoria between 0600 and 0700 than it does at any other time of the day.

One train that is booked to cross slow to fast at Purley is the 1900 Horsham to London Victoria which leaves Redhill later than the standard pattern, misses the usual path north of Purley and has to cross to the fast to overtake a service from Caterham between Purley and East Croydon. There is also a peak working at 0737 which comes from Horsham which makes this manoeuvre.

The booked working fast to slow at Purley is the 0731 London Bridge to Horsham which stops on the fast line at East Croydon then platform 4 at Purley.

However, clearly the main reason why the points are not plain lined is for access to the Caterham and Tattenham Corner branches when the slow lines are otherwise under possession.

Purley Dweller
24 December 2015 at 00:34

Publicity wise, local residents have had letters with the road diversions and bus diversions along with the pickup locations for the “foot replacement minibus” when the bridge is actually replaced (it’s over a mile walk round via Purley Cross or Hartley Down – both routes quite hilly). I noticed a sign at Reedham today telling you to look at the other poster for details of the bus stops. The ticket clerk’s car was blocking the rest of the poster and the details of the bus stop is actually at the end of the station drive rather than at the station. Also it seems that the Redhill bus is running at least 6 times per hour.

Purley Dweller
24 December 2015 at 00:36

There have also been some transformers delivered to the training depot at Purley – we got letters about that too. Presumably there is some upgrading of power supplies happening too.

Pedantic of Purley
24 December 2015 at 09:08

Purley Dweller,

And yesterday (23rd) I overheard the ticket clerk there telling a passenger the work was starting at 11 o’clock that night (i.e 23rd).

The bit about transformers is interesting. According to the BBC local news article there will be no power north of Gatwick Airport. This initially seemed to be correct as Redhill-Gatwick will be covered by First Great Western’s GWR’s dmus but on further investigation there also appears to be a Redhill – Portsmouth Harbour service which I presume is electric. Also the Tonbridge – Reigate service will almost certainly be electric.

The crane arrived by road yesterday afternoon at Purley down car park by the aggregates yard. By nightfall it was already in position with jib raised. Lorries are starting to arrive with a set of points on them. I am a bit surprised they didn’t come by rail but with all the engineering work going on at Christmas I expect the wagons that can carry points (which are obviously out of gauge if carried flat) are in short supply.

Kate
24 December 2015 at 11:12

We have had far worse bus replacement services recently. For overnight engineering works the first weekend in December which closed the same stretch of line, the direct train from East Croydon to Gatwick (15 mins) was replaced with a train to Victoria and a bus from Victoria to Gatwick (about 2 hours).

For Xmas this year most Redhill passengers realise there is no way the bus train service is worthwhile. We are cut off from London except by car which will probably annoy the Greens in London more than us.

Have to say GTR Southern have been first class for Redhill commuters this year. As the bus journey is 52 minutes each way to avoid long delays for regular commuters they have made car parking and season tickets valid at either Dorking or Oxted. That way the Redhill commuter has options other than a bus. Providing of course they have access to a car.

IAmHedgehog
24 December 2015 at 20:03

I am cut off from work at the moment because I live south of Redhill. I’m rather worried that the line won’t be ready to open again on Monday 4th January 2016.

Edgemaster
24 December 2015 at 22:23

Interestingly they’ve seem to planned on stabling 2 4 car units at Tattenham Corner for the duration of the blockade, if OpenTrainTimes and the WTT are accurate.

Purley Dweller
24 December 2015 at 22:44

Looks like they’re ready for the first trains on 4th January.

I notice today sleaves on the relevant bus stops at Merstham and Purley showing rail replacement buses stop here. The direction signs have been out for a couple of days. The crane was up by 2pm and a very big one it is too.

The buses seem to be stopping at Coulsdon Town, Reedham, Purley Oaks and Purley on the way from Redhill to East Croydon as well as the usual stations. Makes sense as the bus stops will presumably be on the A23 anyway.

Anomnibus
24 December 2015 at 22:47

@T33, IAmHedgehog:

Ironically, South London’s dense maze of railway lines may be a mixed blessing during normal operations, but it also means there are a number of alternative radial routes when situations like these arise.

You only need a bus, minicab, or car to take you to the nearest such route into London. Tramlink can get you to either Beckenham Junction or Wimbledon, neither of which should be affected by the Purley or London Bridge works.

Chris C
25 December 2015 at 11:36

@ IAMHedgehog

‘Cut off’ is surely an exaggeration.

I live in Brighton and it would take me 2 hours to get to London. But remember for most people next week is only a 3 day working week anyway.

Yes it’s not ideal but when else could this major work be done? Whenever people have complained they have no answer to that and then begrudgingly admit that it is the best time to do it.

From the descriptions I’ve seen it is not the sort of job that can be done over night or at the weekend.

Kate
25 December 2015 at 13:45

Christmas is a time when people get to see family they might not see much – if at all – during the year. It’s also a time when people are travelling with luggage. Long blockades shouldn’t start before 29th January to give people time to complete Christmas trips. If it has to stretch into the first week in January then so be it.

timbeau
25 December 2015 at 13:54

I think you mean December 29th, but there does seem to be a “one size fits all” approach. Where the main flow is commuter traffic, a shutdown over a bank holiday seems reasonable. But on longer-distance routes, (including to and from airports) a midweek shutdown (96 hours, Monday to Friday lunchtime) would surely be less disruptive. Business meetings can be scheduled to fit the travel options available – Christmas can’t. (Nor, in practice, can school holidays)

MikeP
25 December 2015 at 13:57

I presume then, Kate, that you’d have supported the other option for the London Bridge rebuild, which was, as I understand it, worked up for comparison.

Total closure for 6 months. It would have been cheaper, too. For National Rail. But definitely not for “UK PLC”.

ngh
25 December 2015 at 15:09

Re Mike P,

Except the alternative for London Bridge was total closure for 2.5 years not 6 months. You can see why the selected option was chosen…

You very soon hit logistics trying to do it all at once.

Malcolm
25 December 2015 at 22:20

@timbeau: Suggesting blockades should be differently scheduled for commuter routes versus long-distance routes has an initial appeal. But it doesn’t work, because the bits of railway which need blockades (ready examples to hand being Purley and Holloway) are actually simultaneously part of both kinds of route.

Anonymous
26 December 2015 at 01:03

Let’s be honest, damned if they do and damned if they don’t! Stoked by an ignorant and sensationalist media, sadly including the BBC and the quality papers, which do little other than reproduce press releases and do little or no analysis any more.

Anonymous
26 December 2015 at 16:21

re Gatwick closure over New Year
What I am puzzled by is why Victoria-Gatwick trains are routed to East Grinstead – and then a rail replacement bus to Gatwick . . . when trains could run from Victoria to Horsham via Dorking, reverse, then up to Gatwick (and non-stop except for Clapham Junction). Sure it may take a bit longer, but passengers with loads of baggage would benefit enormously from not having to change onto buses at East Grinstead.

MikeD
26 December 2015 at 16:50

re Anonymous re Gatwick closure over New Year
But that is exactly what is also happening from Sunday 27th December. Journey takes about an hour and a half.

Walthamstow Writer
26 December 2015 at 18:44

@ PoP – TfL buses realtime info has details about the 455’s diversion (via Foxley Hills Rd and Higher Drive and side roads to skirt round the back of Reedham station). Interestingly the stated duration is 1 month – mid December to mid Jan which suggests work at road level continues for a fortnight after the railway starts running or TfL have very odd dates for the work. Although the 455 is quiet on Old Lodge Lane it was being completely overrun at school times on Pampisford Road requiring TfL to run a completely new school bus. If Old Lodge Lane is the only height restriction on the 455 then TfL might have an option to part double deck the 455 so buses at school times have the right capacity and the dedicated school bus could go. They are notoriously expensive to run as stand alone services so it could be worthwhile – depends on the detailed travel patterns.

Purley Dweller
26 December 2015 at 19:44

Old Lodge Lane is closed for sometime after the railway reopens. There is also a blockade on Sunday 10th January.

Graham Feakins
27 December 2015 at 08:59

The letter from Network Rail within this link explains the Old Lodge Lane activity:

Typically thoughtless of GTR the Redhill to East Croydon buses are calling at Redhill. Merstham, Coulsdon South, Coulsdon Town, Reedham, Purley, Purley Oaks, South Croydon and East Croydon. Taking almost an hour instead of 12 minutes. At least they run every 10 minutes!

Why don’t they run a fast bus or two from Redhill to make journeys times faster

TylerB
27 December 2015 at 09:43

Disappointingly, this morning the conductor on the fast Victoria – East Grinstead service was telling passengers over the tannoy for Gatwick to disembark at East Croydon, which is obviously wrong as the whole purpose of the non stop East Grinstead trains is to connect with the bus to Gatwick.

I was going to tell him this at East Croydon but couldn’t get to him in time due to being at the wrong end of the train. However I think the platform staff may have advised him of this, after placing a few lost looking airline passengers back onto the train after they got off…

Why is it when these works take place that it always feels like no one on the railway has been properly briefed about what is going on?

Graham Feakins
27 December 2015 at 10:52

@TylerB – “Why is it when these works take place that it always feels like no one on the railway has been properly briefed about what is going on?” – Going on past experience, briefing may have been thought sufficient by e.g. GTR but the recipient wasn’t concentrating/forgot anyway as it was such an out of course service. In times past, it was invariably the rail replacement bus driver who didn’t know where he was going and had to rely on passengers giving him directions (which became farcical when various passengers offered conflicting advice!). Hopefully, matters have improved since then.

@T33 – What you say about the Redhill buses every 10 minutes seems to be in addition to what PoP says in the article: “East Croydon – Dorking via Purley, Coulsdon Town and Redhill (2 buses per hour)”, which to me indicates just a semi-fast service and not forming part of your 10-minute service. Maybe it’s just that they are not prominently advertised as such.

Phil
27 December 2015 at 10:52

Kate

FACT:- The work cannot be done in a 4 day blockade it needs a good 7 days to do a good job that will last for the next 25 years with minimal intervention.

FACT:- The number of people requiring the railway service to be back to normal on Monday the 4th January far exceeds the number of potential passengers who might wish to be moving around the country by train between Christmas and new year.

FACT:- There is no way the Government will concentrate to let franchises pay the huge extra payments train drivers unions will demand for their members to provide a service on Christmas Day, and in most cases Boxing Day too. Not making use of opportunity as part of a period of engineering is a scandilious waste of a useful resource on an increadably busy rail network.

Graham Feakins
27 December 2015 at 11:02

@Phil – FACT (so far as I can ascertain) from the past decade and thereon back, if not today maybe (I don’t know): The busiest day, with family members travelling long and short distances to visit each other, on German Railways – Deutsche Bahn – is Christmas Day.

Graham H
27 December 2015 at 11:17

Gentlemen – I have rarely seen so many “FACTS” in a single place before, “FACTS” moreover, without a single fact to back them up. (BTW The word “scandilious” is a delicious novelty but wasted as a synonym for scandalous…)

T33
27 December 2015 at 11:32

@GrahamFeakins The Dorking extensions are following the same stopping pattern between Redhill and East Croydon but do at least provide a half hourly alternative to London

Purley Dweller
27 December 2015 at 14:28

The buses might as well stop at each station as they go past anyway, all the stops are on Brighton Road, so the best you could hope for is a 5 minute saving by not stopping. 55 minutes seems quite hopeful to me – I would be interested to find out how well they do even in the reduced peak Tuesday morning.

timbeau
27 December 2015 at 17:02

@Purley Dweller
“The buses might as well stop at each station as they go past anyway, all the stops are on Brighton Road, so the best you could hope for is a 5 minute saving by not stopping.”

But it isn’t only the dwell time – if the buses are scheduled to call, they have to have scheduled times to do so, and cannot leave each intermediate stop until that scheduled time. So either the scheduling is optimistic and they run late, or it is pessimistic and they have to wait for time. (Even if the driver knows they are going to lose time further along the route). With an end-to-end non-stop schedule, only the departure time needs to be fixed – it gets there when it gets there, and if it’s early nobody will mind.

Chris C
27 December 2015 at 17:08

Anyone have any idea about how the works are actually progressing?

Sad Fat Dad
27 December 2015 at 19:04

Chris C – I hear that all is on schedule at present.

Purley Dweller
27 December 2015 at 19:20

@Chris C

I’m going to try to have a walk down tomorrow and have a look if I can.

Anonymous
27 December 2015 at 19:37

Phil, perhaps you could enlighten me as to what these “huge extra payments” are that my union demands for the volunteers giving up their Boxing Day to provide a service at Southern? I just can’t decide whether to spend it on a Harley Davidson or a Ferrari. So sorry that some recompense is required to work when nearly everyone else is enjoying the biggest public holiday of the year.

Graham H
27 December 2015 at 20:34

@Anonymous – apparently, it’s a “FACT” and therefore no further proof is needed…

timbeau
27 December 2015 at 21:32

Appending “FACT” to any statement does not make it true. It is usually a Fabrication: Absent Corroboration – Tosh.

In the same way any officialdom claiming an action as being according to “policy” has lost the argument: “policy” does not trump law, fairness, common sense or common humanity.

Graham H
27 December 2015 at 22:05

@timbeau – 🙂 [I judge from the radio silence that irony has met its target satisfactorily…]

West Coaster
27 December 2015 at 23:21

All going to plan at the moment!

Kate
28 December 2015 at 02:43

@Phil

For an important airport (Gatwick), Christmas is a peak travel period. There’s a very strong argument that the blockade shouldn’t start until 4th January. Peak international travel periods IMO ought to take priority over local journeys.

Sad Fat Dad
28 December 2015 at 08:21

Kate. For important international airports in this country, the run up to Christmas is the peak travel period. Christmas itself, and the days afterwards, are not. Business travellers are, rather understandably, less inclined to travel, and the spare capacity is by no means taken up with hordes of leisure travellers. (How many people really want to visit Düsseldorf on December 28th?) Indeed many airlines ramp down their flight programme between Christmas and New Year as a result. The business travellers tend to return en massed on the first working day after the new year, which in this case is January 4th.

Dare I suggest that in planning works such as this, NR discusses options with the airport as well as the train operators?

Robert Butlin
28 December 2015 at 08:33

@ Kate.

I think we need to think about what “local” journeys are and what “peak international travel” is, for example the absolute need to travel on each day. Local journeys they may be, but Purley Oaks to Victoria at 08:00 is a work journey, not a pop round to see my grannny over Christmas journey.

As a commuter I am expected to get to work on 4 January, and there will be huge numbers of people trying get to work in the week of 4 January; indeed those very large numbers that have made you suggest re-opening Lewes to Uckfield to provide relief for the Brighton main line. I really think that disrupting them, and forcing rail replacement services onto raods already full because of the normal rush hour traffic, including schools would be very bad. For example the Brighton Road in South Croydon is quite mobile when the kids are not at school, quite immobile when they are back. The Godstone Road approaching Purley is much the same.

The “International Traveller” is not so time constrained. On arrival at Gatwick it’s a case of get to London as quickly as possible, and if that is not very quick then so be it. When getting to Gatwick people will simply leave earlier. I agree having to leave earlier is inconvenient, but the numbers inconvenienced are vastly fewer by blockading over Christmas as opposed to blockading in early January and stopping the commuter flows.

Declaring an interest I’d be one of those severely inconvenienced by a blockade starting on 4 January, whereas at the moment I can, because no one else is in the office, have time off in peace.

Greg Tingey
28 December 2015 at 08:46

SFDDare I suggest that in planning works such as this, NR discusses options with the airport as well as the train operators?
Suggest away!
However, in the past few years there have been two absolutely classic cases – one where NR didn’t talk to ITSELF & a n other where it didn’t talk to “the other railway”
[ The second was when both routes to Walthamstow & Chingford were closed on the same weekend, the first was when both routes to the Isle of Thanet were shut down on the same weekend.
Wasn’t that clever? ]

Walthamstow Writer
28 December 2015 at 09:59

Can you imagine the adverse comment and opprobrium being heaped on the heads of Network Rail, train companies and even the DfT if major work started on the first day back to work after a near two week holiday period? The moaning would be non stop and I’d argue there would be no valid defence if thousands were prevented from getting to and from work because someone decided to favour holiday makers. I do sometimes wonder if Kate deliberately takes contrary positions just to generate debate or because she dislikes however the “railway status quo” is defined.

Mr Beckton
28 December 2015 at 11:15

What is disappointing is how every year the time required to do what should be quite straightforward renewals just expands for ever upwards. The Purley work is described as “at a complex junction”. No it’s not; it is a set of straightforward crossovers which can be found all across the system, and in the Bad Old days were far more prevalent than now. There must be 25 or more such sets between Victoria and Brighton. If it requires the complete Christmas and New Year break to handle routine replacement of them, and they are to “last for 25 years”, then it seems we can never again have Christmas or New Year services on this line. Which is somehow not how it was a generation and more ago.

Notwithstanding huge investment in mechanical plant (all of which seems to be standing idle whenever I go over to see such works “in progress”), advances in materials, pre-assembly facilities, staff training, etc, etc, it just seems to take forever longer to do such tasks, and the ability to work on half the tracks at a time, and run a service on the remaining ones, seems lost for ever.

Sad Fat Dad
28 December 2015 at 11:47

Mr Beckton

Quite right. In the good old days a job like this would have been spread over a number of weekends, with 20mph speed restrictions on during the intervening periods. In this case, the number of weekends would have been between 10 and 15, with a lot of rework as elements done one weekend have to be unpicked the next. This rework and repeat setting up / breaking down of the work site costs more, and provides 10-15 opportunities for an overrun. And there would still have needed to be a 4-5 day block to get the new bridge in.

Meanwhile passenger numbers between Christmas and New Year are roughly half what they are in a regular week.

Doing it in a 10 day block is thus cheaper, lower risk, and most importantly inconveniences the fewest passengers.

Pedantic of Purley
28 December 2015 at 12:10

Mr Beckton,

OK, so where else has the same number of points and crossings on the Brighton line all interlinked and affecting all four tracks in such a constrained place? Stoats Nest Junction, yes, but that was redone two years ago. If you have more tracks then a partial closure is a more realistic option. If you have fewer there is less to do.

Which would you prefer? A bodged job every ten years taking at least four days plus intermediate weekend closures or a decent job that lasts for twenty five years. You would still have to close the railway for at least five days anyway for the bridge replacement at some point in the future. I think your suggestion that there are twenty five locations that are critical to the line that would involve a long closure to replaced them is a gross exaggeration. I make it 2, you make it 25. I suspect there are one or two I have forgotten and the truth lies in-between but I am sure we are far closer to my figure than yours.

The London-Brighton line is forever playing catch up. Its time to get ahead of the curve or at least get in sync with it and make it fit for the 21st century.

Sad Fat Dad
28 December 2015 at 13:15

Incidentally, now almost all new point work is on concrete sleepers, and when it is laid on new ballast with a formation that has been properly treated, it should all last for at least 40 years. The last time Purley was done, was 1982 IIRC, so even the timber has lasted 33 years.

In the intervening period only switch rails and crossings will require replacement, typically in a 8 hour possession overnight at a weekend.

Mark Townend
28 December 2015 at 13:57

Between many of the various weekend possessions of a notional multi-stage alternative work programme, some parts of the junction would not be available for normal operations; yet another constraint in addition to the rolling speed restrictions for bedding in each new element of the layout. A major advantage of ‘big bang’ is the whole layout comes back into use at once. Strategically it’s probably better to try and concentrate on reducing the overall duration of these big bang closures rather than trying to split jobs up into ever more stages. Of course that has to be balanced with sufficient contingency to manage risk to the operational railway which is usually banking heavily on the complete facility returning to full use ready for a particular workday morning.

The Stoats Nest Junction renewal was completed along with a number of other BML jobs over Christmas-New Year 2013/2014:

Gatwick Airport can be accessed via Guildford as well as Dorking and points south. While none of those options could be marketed as a “Gatwick Express”, it’s perfectly possible to get into London from there, as long as you don’t mind going via London Waterloo (or, if you’re feeling particularly masochistic, London Paddington.)

To be honest, I’m not sure why you think the Brighton Main Line’s maintenance schedule should be approved by the entirely private operator of a small airport along the route. Why should they get special treatment?

Most people still travel to airports by road, not by rail. This is particularly true of holiday traffic, which tends to involve more luggage and family members. Business travellers tend to travel light, but they rarely go abroad at this time of year.

Contrary to popular belief, the people at Network Rail who do this sort of thing every day really do know what they’re doing.

Malcolm
28 December 2015 at 16:52

Anomnibus says “the people at Network Rail who do this sort of thing every day really do know what they’re doing“.

I’m quite satisfied that, yes, in general they do. But that does not mean they are immune to occasional mistakes or misjudgments. Nor should it mean that they are “above” challenge and questioning, of the kind which Kate has done here. The consensus of those commenting seems to be that the choices which NR have made are either inevitable, or if not inevitable, bring overall less grief than any alternatives. That may well be so, but I do not see any need for us to go over the top in defending them.

I do wonder if what looks to me like over-reaction may be connected with the fuss which the newspapers seem to have made about this issue. People here with sympathy for the railways (most of us?) may be “circling the wagons” to defend the railway operators against what is a largely negative and unhelpful press.

I’m not saying that we should not do this. But it might be good to understand exactly why we are doing it.

Malcolm
28 December 2015 at 17:05

Anomnibus asks “Why should they [Gatwick operators] get special treatment?”

This is misrepresenting the situation. Those here, or elsewhere, who are deprecating the effect of the current closures on travel to or from Gatwick are not doing so (it seems to me) because of concern for Gatwick profits. They are speaking out of concern for the ordinary travelling public, of whom many have undoubtedly been inconvenienced. Bustitution and long diversions are always unsatisfactory arrangements, justified only when (as in this case, I reckon) they are unavoidable.

Anomnibus
28 December 2015 at 17:48

@Malcolm:

As I pointed out, nobody is being “cut off” from anywhere. Despite the media’s assertions to the contrary, it is still perfectly possible to get to and from Gatwick, Three Bridges, Brighton, etc, from London by rail. You just have to take a more roundabout route to get there.

This is the one main benefit of its unusually dense layout and excessive duplication of routes south of the Thames: The line from Liverpool Street to Colchester may be very quick, but if it is closed for a week, there are no viable rail-based alternatives. There is no shortage of other routes to the south coast, and the Coastway services provide the necessary orbital connectivity. So does Tramlink.

Failing that, there are plenty of buses, coaches, minicabs… or one can always choose to drive their own car.

In the old days, blockades were still done. The only difference is that there were a few more diversionary routes available to British Rail, but Network Rail can hardly be blamed for that.

Chris C
28 December 2015 at 17:53

Gatwick is only ‘cut off’ if coming from London and even then it’s not really cut off at all – just takes longer and needs a bit more planning.

If you don’t want to lug bags from East Grinstead onto the bus then just get the 2 per hour trains from Victoria that only take 10 minutes longer e.g. tomorrow

Let’s not play into the exaggeration of some of the media. And I include some of the breathless ‘we have discovered …’ or ‘we can reveal …’ reports in the week before Christmas when the information has been out there for months.

And there are plenty of trains from points south e.g. Brighton that are still going there without issue and I will be on one of them on Thursday morning (with luggage)

Anomnibus
28 December 2015 at 17:58

@Malcolm (again):

I wasn’t misrepresenting the situation. I was responding to Kate’s implication that Network Rail should run their plans by Gatwick’s operator for approval. Gatwick is a privately owned, profit-making business, so Network Rail cannot give them special treatment; they’d have to run all their plans by all private businesses that might be affected by any such work. If you thought progress on railway improvements was glacial today, it’d be downright tectonic if such a policy was implemented.

Gatwick were doubtless informed of the plans and timetable for Purley. I’m sure they may even have commented upon it and made suggestions, but Network Rail’s options are limited not only by circumstances, weather and logistics, but also by politics and budgetary constraints.

As for passengers: closures over Christmas have been a “feature” of the UK’s rail network since the days of Railtrack, let alone Network Rail. For the life of me, I cannot understand why anybody is still surprised — least of all the media.

answer=42
28 December 2015 at 18:10

As a Gatwick Airport user and someone who generally flies more than most people, someone who flies and uses trains at Christmas and would be greatly convenienced by the availability of trains generally and Gatwick trains in particular over the Christmas period, I think that the idea of abandoning blockades over the Christmas period is absolutely, totally crayoning.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Just look at the hotel room rates at Heathrow over Christmas as against any other time of year.

There is one thing though. Please Network Rail, Father Christmas, whatever, please let me know where next Christmas’s rail blockades will be by late August because that’s when I, like many others, have to organise the Christmas logistics.

Now back to important stuff, like extending the Waterloo & City.

Purley Dweller
28 December 2015 at 18:51

Answer=42 I agree with the comment about August. The plans were in place months ago and the communication or basics of could have been given out then, the timetables have been online since early October, but only if you know where to look.

GTR Driver
28 December 2015 at 19:14

Mr Beckton, The junction north of Purley is complex enough. There are six platform at the station with various combinations of route access available in both directions, with all the associated signalling. There are also sidings related to the aggregates facility that are shared by passenger trains on occasions. The work could not be completed whilst keeping two lines open because all four lines are affected. Some practices and works do take longer these days due to a greater awareness of risk AND a greater number of trains. Almost every Southern service of any distance has to pass through Purley. I for one do not wish to see trains mingling with human beings on the track if possible and believe that a reduction in such practices to be an advancement. This is the quietest time of the year with many people taking several days beyond the run of bank holidays, and ultimately the least disruptive way of doing large scale works.

Graham H
28 December 2015 at 19:44

@GTR – all that you say, plus, if the works are staged, that’s a whole sheaf of new traffic notices for the crew to learn each time. [And then,ofcourse, the punters expect the interim arrangements to work perfectly straight off]

Kate
28 December 2015 at 19:58

If someone wants to close the line through West Croydon then a Christmas blockade makes sense. But not for any line which serves Gatwick, nor for any long-distance lines.

A question for those who don’t want closures starting 4th January instead. Since I assume many of staff working over Christmas and New Year will be paid overtime, wouldn’t it be much cheaper to start the blockade on 4th January too?

Purley Dweller
28 December 2015 at 20:20

Kate – Every morning after 4th January over 3000 people will be on trains leaving Purley between 0745 and 0805. This is just on the trains that stop there, going in 4 different directions. More join at South Croydon and Purley Oaks. There will be more still not stopping. Where are you going to find the buses. Without the blockade the A23 tails back from Purley Cross to Horley Hooley. And back from Merstham to Horley Hooley going south. Where do you expect the buses to go? And would you want to be the local MPsolicitors on the route with all those thousands complaining, or the Chairman of Network Rail called before said MPs to explain why the work wasn’t done at Christmas.

Anonymous
28 December 2015 at 20:24

Depends who pays the bills. If we start a ten day closure on 4 January that’s probably going to cost lots of businesses money. Or Network Rail or the TOCs in various penalties if the effect of the blockade ripples out. But I still can’t believe anyone would be advocating a closure as everyone goes back to work when they have to travel rather than during a longish holiday when far fewer of them do so!

Chris C
28 December 2015 at 20:53

Kate it might be cheaper for NR but would cost the general economy a lot more.

Please do tell us when you think it would be possible to close the BML or any other main line without it causing any sort of disruption to anyone at all.

ngh
28 December 2015 at 21:10

Kate,

You are presumably aware that there is less long distance rail travel over the Xmas – New Year period as the number of business travellers and long distance commuters falls dramatically? (This is partially offset by infrequent users of those routes who need more advice than regulars on bustitution etc. as they have less familiarity with the area and who get up set that the trains don’t run when they want to use them, the individuals will also presumably complain that the local pub back home where they grew up has closed despite it also being so rammed every Xmas Eve and Easter etc. (But having comparatively no customers in between which they don’t see). Hence it is logically makes more sense to do long distance route works at quiet times such as Xmas – NY.

On long distance routes looking at the prices on TOC booking engines in a scientific way will tell you when is and isn’t busy (Also note the total number of seats available at certain days/times)

The overtime bill will be far cheaper than trying to hire additional buses or coaches for the numbers travelling on those days. Also you’ll find that there aren’t any available buses or coaches for a fortnight stating on the 4th Jan because they will be back in use on school bus runs shortly afterwards – hence you have to do big engineering works in the school holidays another reason for the Xmas-NY, Easter. late May BH (Half term) and August BH blockades [One school near me in south London me organises circa 40 coaches/buses on behalf of several schools and I know a fair number of other schools do the same – it just won’t be physically possible to hire the buses or get the drivers!]

Pedantic of Purley
28 December 2015 at 22:09

I have done an update at the end of the article . Search for “Update:”.

It is probably not the update you were expecting. It certainly was not the one I was expecting to write.

T33,

I can assure you that today between Purley and Redhill the difference in time for a journey by 405 bus (all stops) and a hypothetical non-stop rail replacement bus between those two locations could probably be measured in seconds not minutes.

I also saw the driver of a rail replacement bus allow passengers to alight at a non-rail replacement bus stop rather than have to wait until reaching the officially designated stop. The impact on journey time for other passengers would have been zero.

smitham43
28 December 2015 at 23:10

The SGN work at Coulsdon cannot be that urgent as they all went home at 4.30!

I thought that one of the aims of TfL management was to ensure that these clashes did not occur. If it really is urgent, then why is the work not being carried out on 24hour basis? It is not the first time such a clash has happened at this location.

petras409
28 December 2015 at 23:17

Purley Dweller,

A correction, I think, from this Cornwall Dweller. I believe that you meant to say Hooley rather than Horley.

Purley Dweller
28 December 2015 at 23:27

Yes I did mean Hooley – Horley would be a really long jam! Didn’t proof read after writing on tablet.

MikeP
29 December 2015 at 07:37

@answer=42: please let me know where next Christmas’s rail blockades will be by late August
On being challenged over this (re: London Bridge blockade), SouthEastern told us that they avoid communicating more than one major planned disrupting event at a time.
So the August blockade and the expected-to-be-Olympics-style (!!) congestion for the RWC (Rugby World Cup) had to be done and dusted before the Christmas/New Year publicity started.
I have sympathy for their point of view that this avoids confusion, to say nothing of the FACT that many people won’t even look for any changes until a few hours before their planned journey starts. But like you, others do plan on a long-term basis, and this info should be out there at easy-to-find places well in advance. Allegedly, even the rail minister expressed surprise when she found out about the London Bridge blockade.

Sad Fat Dad
29 December 2015 at 08:24

@MikeP “Allegedly, even the rail minister expressed surprise when she found out about the London Bridge blockade.”

Whilst you can never rule anything out, given what happened last Christmas the Minister will have been briefed extensively on works for this Christmas some time ago. She has also been around London Bridge several times (with pictures in the paper!) and will have had details on what is to come.

Sad Fat Dad
29 December 2015 at 08:31

@Kate. I am now also of the opinion that you deliberately take contrary views to provoke reaction, or more charitably, debate.

Anyway, there are fewer travellers to/from Gatwick Airport between Christmas Eve and the first working day in the New Year, than at any other time of the year. This is because there are fewer airline passengers at this time, and also because a notable proportion of the 21,000 people who work at the airport are not at work. Overall it is the quietest time of the year for the airport, and this coincides with the quietest time of the year for the railway.

This is why all three big blockades of the route to Gatwick in the last decade (Earlswood in 2006/7, Stoats Nest 2013/4, Purley now) have been done at this time.

Edgepedia
29 December 2015 at 09:37

@answer=42: please let me know where next Christmas’s rail blockades will be by late August
The railway timetable is released for the next 12 weeks, so that for end of December 2016 would be available at the end of October.

I would imagine that to schedule such a large work as that at Purley, the planning and preparations need to have been completed to a high level of detail, especially after the problems last year. Between the planning and planned works, events elsewhere on the system could change priorities and divert resources, such as the recent problems with the sea wall at Dover.

The Sussex route study can be used to estimate the number of passengers that will travel through Purley between 8 and 9 am on 4 January: Figure 19 (p. 31) gives 30 trains, and Figure 29 (p. 39) gives a seat utilisation of 85-100%. Assuming that these trains are 8-car Class 377s, and referring to figure 53 (p. 57) gives 482 x 30 x 0.85 = 12,291; an upper limit assuming 12-car 377s and gives 18,436. A NBfL double-decker seats 80 people, so this means we would need between 150 and 230 buses (bus drivers), for this hour alone.

ngh
29 December 2015 at 10:48

Re Edgepedia,

and then the roads couldn’t cope with that number of extra buses (or even a significant fraction of that)
[See the traffic jams caused by SWML Wimbledon – Clapham Junction closures on Sundays with a much smaller number of buses earlier this year.]

Mr Beckton
29 December 2015 at 10:56

@PedanticOfPurley : “OK, so where else has the same number of points and crossings on the Brighton line all interlinked and affecting all four tracks. If you have more tracks then a partial closure is a more realistic option …Which would you prefer? A bodged job every ten years taking at least four days plus intermediate weekend closures or a decent job that lasts for twenty five years. You would still have to close the railway for at least five days anyway for the bridge replacement.”

For goodness sake, all. Purley is a straightforward junction with the Coulsdon platform lines, plus one double crossover between the slows and the fasts. There’s not even a crossover in the other direction. Where else has such “complexity” on the Brighton line? Well, Victoria, Battersea Park, Clapham … all the way down to Brighton.

Now time was when the replacement of such was typically overseen by the ganger for the section and his regional engineering boss, for whom it was part of life. No Project Managers times n; no specific Project Procurement office; no Project Diversity Co-ordinator, etc, etc. There also was not the gangs or plant standing around for much of the shift not doing anything because they haven’t been told what to do next, as disappointingly is generally the case now.

Regarding a “bodged job every 10 years”, the gangers of old delivered immaculate-looking permanent way that lasted; if they could look at the weed-strewn main lines of today, with half the UK’s annual rail production seemingly thrown up into the overgrown and untended lineside vegetation, and left to rust away, I think they would say they knew a Bodged Job when they saw one.

An underbridge swing-in, 4 tracks, was typically a 24-hour job for each span, if the structures were separate (as here).

answer=42
29 December 2015 at 11:27

@ Mike P, Edgepedia

Thanks for your comments. I don’t think it it necessary to know the timetable >12 weeks ahead, merely whether a blockade is planned. I think SouthEastern should be congratulated for having a clear blockades / holidays / events policy and being prepared to communicate it to the public. OK, this policy is not what I want but a railway needs a clear ‘baseline’ policy that can be delivered before it can think about whether and how to improve it.

The long-term planning issue is not just about Christmas. It also affects many people’s summer holidays.

Purley Dweller
29 December 2015 at 11:29

Just been down to Reedham to catch bus. There were loads. All single decker and empty and none stopped because there is no stop sign. Caught 466 instead.

I feel you are entirely missing the point (sorry about pun). Whether unintentional or deliberate I cannot say.

Victoria, Battersea Park, Clapham don’t count as you have an alternative route to London Bridge. In any case there are more opportunities to keep some lines open. And it is not true it is the same all the way down to Brighton. South of Stoats Nest Junction to Three Bridges and beyond the 4-track railway has the characteristics of two two-track railways as the fast and the slow lines are quite a distance apart meaning you can work on one pair of lines and have the other pair open. I restate my case that the only place where a complex renewal almost inevitably involves closing the railway is between South Croydon Junction and Stoats Nest. The only other junction that might be a problem is where four tracks go down to two south of Three Bridges – but at least then you are past Gatwick.

Purley might be “straightforward” – whatever that means – but they are replacing 16 of the points there. It is not a simple single ladder junction (as at Stoats Nest but there it is in both directions). Trains can switch from the up slow to the up fast at the same time as another train is switching from the down fast to the down slow.

I know you have a perception that this can all be done by jolly old Charlie and his merry men over a weekend but judging by the size of the worksites and the number of vehicles parked there I would suggest not.

Finally, I am quite prepared to accept that the ganger and his mates delivered immaculately looking permanent way and I am sure they did a good job according to the standards of the time. But knowledge and engineering have moved on and we know how to do the job better now so that the ganger doesn’t keep having to go back to fix it. To take just one example, in the old days engineering work was handed back with a 20mph speed limit which meant days of delays and cancellations. Nowadays track is handed back at full line speed. We also have safety standards which are a world away from what was considered acceptable in the past.

timbeau
29 December 2015 at 13:30

@Edgepedia
“we would need between 150 and 230 buses (bus drivers), for this hour alone.”

You’ve actually understated the problem, as very few buses actually SEAT as many as 80, and standing is not usually permitted except on stage carriage services.

I had a good wander yesterday and the lack of any indication where to catch the bus for Reedham is one of the things that struck me. The ticket clerk’s car was still parked partially obscuring the one relevant notice outside Reedham station. There was a whiteboard notice by the ticket window telling you that replacement buses would stop on the Brighton Road at the bus stops indicated – but, of course, as you found, there were no indications on the bus stops as to which ones these are. It is fairly obvious southbound but the northbound it could be one of two and it is not clear which one it is.

There is nothing (e.g. a notice) to save ticket holders walking up to the station only to have to retrace their steps.

I didn’t see any rail replacement buses stop at any of the possible Reedham stops.

At least most of the 455 bus stops now make it clear that 455 buses are not stopping there. One bus stop flag in Old Lodge Lane is bagged with a message that the stop is not in use but the one opposite isn’t. For the ones they have sorted out – better late than never.

Very little work going on at Old Lodge Lane – just enhancing the raised crane deck. There is probably not much that can be done before the crane arrives.

At Purley most rail replacement bus stops are staffed but there isn’t the interaction that there was two years ago at Coulsdon Town.

Most buses were lightly loaded. There appeared to be an enhanced 405 service and, no doubt, some passengers were taking the attitude that if the service provided was a bus then one might as well pay a bus fare rather than a train fare for a bus service.

smitham43
29 December 2015 at 14:34

@POP 1401 “there is nothing… retrace their steps”

A notice at Smitham (sorry, Coulsdon Town) says that all tickets have to be validated at the station readers as this cannot be done on the bus

but they are replacing 16 of the points there. It is not a simple single ladder junction (as at Stoats Nest but there it is in both directions).

Isn’t it 17 points? 😉

The old points the gangers replaced regularly in times past will have had switch rails and frog made from standard rail (often off cuts) and these will have worn very quickly needing frequent replacement unlike their modern equivalents. (An when they do need replaceing ti will be very easy with standard components, you take the hit up front for quicker, easier cheaper maintain later)

The twin ladder at Purley will presumably be effectively several large agglomerations of standard points hence the need to do it in one go.
Also if the geometry of the points is being changed and they are being replace with ones for slightly higher turnout running speed it would also need to be done in one go.

Even when Balham was closed several Christmas ago services were still run from Victoria via Herne Hill.

Three Bridges is less critical as the single ladder (Up Slow to Up Fast or Down Fast to Down Slow) north of the station is in a less space constrained location and is separated (by 2 miles) from the Balcombe Tunnel Junction where it goes from 4 to 2 tracks so there are more option to keep services running.

The single ladder at Tinsley Green South of Gatwick isn’t space constrained so each pair of points can be replaced without effecting the others (unlike Purley) ditto the 2 sets of single ladders at Earlswood.

The twin ladder just north of Gatwick and Stoats Nest are the only other tricky ones.

Sad Fat Dad
29 December 2015 at 17:57

Ngh, PoP etc

Yes it’s 17 sets of points

Yes the geometry is changing; many of the new points are not quite in the same position as those they replace.

No, it won’t be handed back at linespeed. Some plain line renewals are handed back at linespeed – principally those done by the high output machinery. Handbacks above 50mph require all welding to be completed, and application of the Dynamic Track Stabiliser (DTS) or one of its close relatives, which, err stabilise the track, dynamically. (Effectively they simulate the passing of about a week’s worth of traffic, and help the ballast find a stable state).

As with all other switch and crossing renewals, the planned hand back speed will be 50mph for passenger trains. This will be raised to linespeed one or two weeks after completion of the main possession.

Yes, renewals in the ‘good old days’ were handed back at 20mph, or 40mph in the latter days of BR when bottom ballast started being consolidated by wacker plates immediately after it was dropped ‘in the hole’.

Pedantic of Purley
29 December 2015 at 18:34

Sad Fat Dad, ngh

I am sure I read 16 sets of point on one of the TOC websites, or maybe the Thameslink Programme one. However 17 makes more sense but I assumed one of the ones to the siding was not being replaced.

smitham43,

But lots of “tickets” don’t need to be validated e.g. 60+, staff, season tickets, the good old fashioned paper variety. So it is could be a pointless walk just to do this. Coulsdon Town is bad enough but at Reedham it could easily be a ten minute return trip.

Not strictly relevant but it would make a lot more sense if TfL just put on some fast services that that accepted Oyster in the normal way as well as accepting paper rail tickets. Southern (and ultimately Network Rail I presume) could pay for, or at least contribute to, the cost of putting these on. This would mean that non-rail passengers could use the replacement buses and we wouldn’t have this daft notion of having to detour to the station. Passengers are inconvenienced enough without this additional silliness. What if you validate at the station and then a normal service bus turns up? Do you wait for the rail replacement bus because you have now validated your ticket? This sort of think is never implemented in the way that customers would find most convenient.

Walthamstow Writer
29 December 2015 at 18:48

@ PoP – shows there is some merit to TfL’s approach that because it takes the revenue risk overall then it doesn’t force people to jump through validation hoops for Oyster / bank card use. You just get on the bus and don’t pay. I’m sure some people dodge a fair and have a ride but in the wider scheme of things it’s minor. I certainly wouldn’t want a 10 min return walk to touch a card and potentially miss the bus I wanted especially it is was dark, cold and wet and buses weren’t especially frequent.

As for Southern or Network Rail paying TfL for Oyster equipped buses then excuse me while I have a laughing fit in the corner. Can’t see the DfT, TSGN’s and NR’s paymaster, agreeing to that.

Purley Dweller
29 December 2015 at 19:08

Got replacement bus back from East Croydon. Got to Purley and the driver shouted up a recommendation that you don’t stay on for Reedham as it is “taking 35 minutes to get there in the traffic” didn’t attempt the traffic and walked home from Purley.

It’s all very well telling us to validate at the station but then you have to revalidate at Easy Croydon as well. I did end up on a service bus this morning but they weren’t in the slightest bit interested in tickets on the bus this evening. I doubt they ever are as ultimately Network Rail are paying for them saving the costs of drivers and fuel for Southern. Bus was not empty at 5pm but nowhere near full. Staff in evidence at Purley, interacting with passengers and the bus stopped it’s pull out to pick up two running latecomers.

At South Croydon the bus stop seems sensible but at Purley Oaks the bus is not stopping at the stop called Purley Oaks station but at the following stop instead (bus driver stopped on the bell at the Purley Oaks station stop for someone getting off).

There wasn’t much going on this evening at Reedham. All the prep seems to be done. Purley station car park is full of contractors cars and vans so there must be some work site up there.

AlisonW
29 December 2015 at 20:18

Whilst it may be Kate arguing here for not closing the metals to passenger (and freight) traffic over the holiday period I’m sad to say she isn’t the only one voicing that view as I’ve seen it in press articles and in many ‘social media’ postings.

What I respond to people each time is “If not now, when?” and, generally, they are then immediately stuck for a response. In a perfect world the commuters of the UK would all take a break for two weeks in high summer (so lots of dry daylight to work in) but we aren’t Iceland, so we don’t. And though there are a _few_ lines which are specifically ‘commuter’ and not ‘long-distance’ they more frequently run parallel to each other, thus demanding their mutual closure for ‘elf ‘n’ safetee (which, arguably, wasn’t the case in the semi-distant past).

Purley Dweller
29 December 2015 at 20:26

Ngh – Thanks for the video link. It was very interesting to see that they are renewing right down to the bottom not just the actual junction.

On speed restrictions – the trains were slow through Stoats Nest for a couple of weeks after the work finished.

ngh
29 December 2015 at 21:27

Re Purley Dweller,

In general the temporary speed restrictions (TSRs) usually last till a possession 2 weeks after the main works (hence the Jan 9th /10th closures in this case?) when the final bits of rail welding will be done with clamp fishplates at some joints till then hence one reason for speed restrictions.

Just replacing the points is an £8.9 million project. Do you really want this without proper management, supervision and co-ordination? It also lasts for months.

Don’t forget the signalling is being replaced as well. It is not just a bit of track replacement and it is not like-for-like replacement either.

What we are seeing currently is just the phase where the railway is closed for a blockade and the big stuff is done. I presume the project diversity co-ordinator is just cynicism and irrelevant.

There also was not the gangs or plant standing around for much of the shift not doing anything because they haven’t been told what to do next, as disappointingly is generally the case now.

Load of Rubbish. There are very detailed timetables giving plans for every quarter of an hour. Not all work can be done simultaneously and if people are hanging around it isn’t because they haven’t been told what to do next.

An underbridge swing-in, 4 tracks, was typically a 24-hour job for each span, if the structures were separate (as here).

I don’t know where you are talking about but the bridge at Old Lodge Lane is a composite one with an brick arch later supporting a steel deck. The brick abutments will need some refurbishment. I suspect the simple bit of removing the existing steel structure and replacing it with a new one in steel or concrete can be done in 24 hours. It is the other stuff (arch demolition, abutment renewal) that will take time.

Apparently today at the gas work site there was frenzied hole digging with lots of people around. I had a look at 7.00 p.m. and there were three men on site and one was operating a mini-digger. There was a big hole that the bloke in the bowler hat would have approved of (it was square). Traffic as bad as yesterday.

Purley Dweller
29 December 2015 at 21:52

Traffic is terrible and is spreading well beyond southbound on Brighton Road in Purley. Foxley Hill Road and Godstone Road are as bad as morning rush hour at 6PM compounded by the closure of.Old Lodge Lane putting extra traffic here. Brighton Road North of Purley was surprisingly clear though.

ngh
29 December 2015 at 23:46

Re PoP and Mr Beckton

“Not all work can be done simultaneously and if people are hanging around it isn’t because they haven’t been told what to do next.”

I would actually be far more worried if there weren’t times when people where just hanging around as it could indicate that too many tasks are on the critical path or attempting to make an appearance on it, that there is not enough resilience or recovery built in or the timing estimation and planning wasn’t up to scratch. The weather has been fairly good which should help keeping on schedule.
(See last years Kings Cross article)

Malcolm
30 December 2015 at 08:33

To add to what ngh said:

On the hanging around issue, most complex projects can be planned either for optimum worker usage (no hanging around), or for minimum total elapsed time. (Other choices, of course, are also available). I would sincerely hope that for one like this, this choice has been made correctly.

What maybe should have been done is to employ a project visibility manager, to arrange for a hut for those workers with no task at a particular moment to be hidden out of view of the over-critical public.

Graham H
30 December 2015 at 09:08

@Malcolm – I’m reminded of the oft-heard complaints from the great unwashed commuterdom that the railways were inefficient – every time they passed a site where workers were “supposed” to be working on the track, the chaps were actually standing idly around beside the track.

ngh
30 December 2015 at 09:53

Re Malcolm,

It is probably more an optimum worker usage with along list of caveats and constraints vs minimum total elapsed time so not much difference in cost terms in this case (less than their potential late hand back cost on Monday morning?). The issue probably being more availability of key skill personnel in areas where there are skill shortages hence some jobs elsewhere aren’t done.

Chris C
30 December 2015 at 10:22

@ Graham H

And don’t forget the cheery wave to the driver as the train passes!

timbeau
30 December 2015 at 10:30

The cheery wave (often with the trackworker’s back to the approaching train) is also acknowledgement of the driver’s hooter, to reassure the driver that the trackworker is aware of the approaching train and isn’t going to step into its path.

timbeau yes I am aware of what the cheery wave means but the vast majority of people don’t and it fits in with the ‘lazy workers’ meme “oh they have time to wave but not to fix anything”

Anomnibus
30 December 2015 at 13:36

I got sucked into a YouTube black hole recently when I came across some old railway films. There’s one on the rebuilding of Grosvenor Bridge (the one that takes trains in and out of Victoria) that made for truly fascinating viewing.

But the real shocker was the film — I forget which video it was, so no link, sorry — that showed how OHLE was installed back in the day. Men were walking back and forth on the roof of a moving railway carriage, stringing up the wires as they went and hooking in the droppers. The first clip was scary enough, but there’s a second that shows the same procedure being performed in appalling weather, lashed by wind and rain, with trains passing by on adjacent tracks. There were no hi-vis vests, no hard hats — not even railings along the side of the carriage. It was terrifying to watch.

And it really does hammer home the difference between how it used to be done, and how it is done today. People died back then doing this stuff. As a matter of routine. Many of those tunnels our trains pass through today were built at the cost of workers’ lives.

Watching those videos proves how our attitudes have changed for the better over the years since then. At the very least, we no longer take it for granted that railway workers should sacrifice their lives for the sake of a slightly faster service to Gatwick.

And, probably not to the surprise of many, the emergency gas works on the Brighton Road have now been extended to Sunday 3rd January. So that will be 1 day out of 8 that the rail replacement bus service would not be very badly affected by unplanned road works.

Anomnibus
30 December 2015 at 14:12

@Pedantic of Purley:

To be fair, SGN’s works team are being hampered by a dirty great hole in the middle of the A23 right on the site they’re working on that’s causing a lot of congestion. It’s really messing with their logistics.

I heard getting three lengths of plastic pipe from B&Q took them over three hours using the van-replacement bus service.

timbeau
30 December 2015 at 15:15

@Anomnibus

Surely SGN should have factored into their logistics the traffic congestion caused by their own work?
An analogy would be expecting all the staff working on the Old Lodge Lane bridge to travel to the worksite by train to Purley.

Anomnibus
30 December 2015 at 15:42

@timbeau:

Of course, that’s why I mentioned the van-replacement bus service!

It’s probably a good thing they decided not to take the spoil away by rail.

Incidentally, I also heard from a reliable total stranger on the Internet that SGN are offering a free Shanks’ Pony bus-replacement service while the A23 is effectively knackered.

Pedantic of Purley
30 December 2015 at 17:04

For the benefit of others, B&Q is further north off the A23 at Valley Park, Croydon. Should be around 15 minutes journey, if that, at this time of year.

An analogy would be expecting all the staff working on the Old Lodge Lane bridge to travel to the worksite by train to Purley.

Or the classic at the Marathon when loads of spectators who turned up specifically to watch it express surprise and dismay because they cannot get to where they want to go to because there is a marathon being run and they cannot cross the road.

The crane has arrived at Old Lodge Lane. This means that the road under the bridge is closed to all including pedestrians. But Network Rail assure us this is not a problem because there will be dedicated free on demand minibus shuttle service taking pedestrians from one side of the works to the other. Only trouble is it has to go via the A23 Brighton Road and traffic there is terrible due to SGN digging up the road.

T33
30 December 2015 at 17:14

@PoP You are very correct about the rail replacement buses and the 405. I’ve been to East Croydon twice by car now and both times both ways took over an hour. Traffic is intense and I probably travelled at busiest period. Reviewing the Redhill District Rail user’s website though, passenger complaints are almost non-existent which is quite unusual. Perhaps because Redhill Rail Users let people know about it last May so many commuters save holiday for this Christmas.

Traffic is also unusually heavy from South of Redhill/Reigate going north to London, so perhaps I wasn’t the only one to take a car instead of risking a Rail Replacement bus

Two things I have noticed – Network Rail have taken the closure opportunity to cut down (devastate) all the trees along the cuttings by the A23. This has then been covered by a mesh presumably to stop slippages. I don’t recall any “leaves on the line” issues along that bit of track.

The Layout restrictions at Redhill are also being shown clearly. As the half hourly services to Brighton/Portsmouth and Brighton/Southampton via Horsham are arriving from the South in platform 2 pulling forward towards Merstham then back into Platform 3 to depart southwards. This is because they have two trains in Redhill most of the time and you cannot arrive in Platform 3 from the south. Platform 1A/1B which could do this is needed for reversing Tonbridge-Reigate and FGW trains. Roll on Platform Zero!

smitham43
30 December 2015 at 17:54

@PoP 1351 Actually the work was completed this morning.

They are now digging a completely new hole on the other side of the road.
Which is roughly where they laid a new gas main only a few months ago!

@T33 Tree cutting by the A23 was actually done a few weeks ago

ngh
30 December 2015 at 18:24

Lots of cutting stabilisation works were also scheduled for the blockade along with 2km of rail replacement along the Merstham stretch.

smitham 43 – that is beginning to sound more and more like scheduled work they couldn’t get permission for… (Thus screwing up their plans so just do it any way and claim it is an emergency, this wouldn’t be the first time. Electricity and Gas DN effectively have an incentive to front load work in the regulatory periods (i.e. now)). The TfL penalty structure needs more work.

Xmas – New Year travel demand: I got a wide choices of seats (only 1/3 occupied) on train home this evening when I usually end up standing part of the way hence demand looks rather less than normal at the moment.

Tunnel Bore
30 December 2015 at 19:09

Great article, sorry I’m late to the party.

There is no doubt about the right time to blockade BML through Gatwick. Morning peak TL and Southern trains leave Haywards Heath and Three Bridges full-and-standing. The Brighton-starting Gat-Ex that pick up at Gatwick have a reasonable amount of room because main shortage of seats is to London Bridge and those Gat-Ex that start from Gatwick are nearly empty (e.g. 07:35 (1U29) which I, and many others from further south, change onto it in order to get a seat).

As others have said, the distinction and discussion of long-distance versus commuter use is silly for most routes into London. The BML is a commuter railway south of Gatwick every bit as much as it is north of East Croydon.

1. Grammar pedantry: shouldn’t “do not want to have to major engineering work” be “do not want to have to do major engineering work”?
[Yes. A simple word omitted. Now included. PoP]

2. Does anyone have a link to data on passenger flows? There’s a lot of discussion backwards and forwards about commuters-vs-family visits – but I would love to have some actual figures.

I travelled from London to Crewe and back over the Christmas period, and as usual, every seat was filled (20 people standing, as the train manager informed us), and there was what looked like 1 huge bag per person at least. Compared to normal off-peak weekday travel, which might have only few people scattered through the carriage, it was heaving. So I would like some figures for `peak’ hours in that period, to see why Christmas week is chosen!

3. How much is modal shift considered? Does anyone know? If people only travel by train once a year at Christmas, and it is a wonderful stress-free experience, they might do it more often. It they do it once and it is horrible, they’re more likely to drive instead. If businessmen are inconvenienced for, say, the first week in July (which in an alternative reality is The Traditional Date For National Rail Work) won’t they probably still return to the train the following week?

Phil
30 December 2015 at 20:38

Storm frank is causing NR headaches with regard to Old Lodge Lane – the high winds forecast over the next few days having the potential to stop crane operations. A go / no go decision is imminent – with a job like this you cannot stop halfway through.

Do you make a decision to abort and not only do you have to come back another time, but you waste a lot of money on staff plus preparations (such as covering the road surface to protect utilities) that have to be removed and will still be needed when the work is completed.

Or do you press ahead and hope the winds subside enough that the cranes can do their job and accept the risk that if the weather remains hostile, the BML won’t be up and running on the 4th Janurary.

Not a choice I would want to make and I do feel for those whose call it is.

Graham H
30 December 2015 at 21:51

@Phil – and one might add that cranes of this nature are booked months in advance, so missing the given slot will probably postpone the whole bridge swing for some time.

Well that would explain why the crane appears to have been stationary all evening. Its easy to see if it moves as it has a red light at the top. It does make you wonder why they didn’t start on Christmas Eve but then the crane being used looks suspiciously like the one that was at Purley station (I don’t know if there is still one there now).

I went down this evening in the pouring rain – I walked thanks to SGN. On the Brighton Road side absolutely nothing appears to be happening and there is no sign of anyone on site. I would have caught the free minibus to the other side but there was nowhere convenient to wait out of the rain (the other bridge seems to offer very little protection as water seems to permeate it in many places) and I didn’t have much confidence that the minbus actually existed. Even if it did, I suspect the trip would have taken 10-15 minutes.

I agree it is an awful decision to have to make. The build-up on the road to support the crane is quite substantial and would take days to clear. If the bridge work could be done in a 56 hour possession then one could simply delay it until the weekend when the line is closed anyway. Or one could delay it until a subsequent weekend and at least you would only have to run buses from Coulsdon Town to Redhill. This presumes they could organise the arrangements properly in such a short space of time and the delay in opening the road would be acceptable.

I think the political sensitivity means that they will be ultra cautious even if it is a multi-million pound cost. Easter maybe? Then again, how vital is it to replace this bridge?

Malcolm
30 December 2015 at 22:13

While it is true what Graham says about booking cranes months in advance, it is probably not relevant for this particular decision. The next available slot for closing the Brighton line is probably next Christmas anyway (if PoP was right earlier when suggesting that because of the nature of the bridge, it has to be more than a 24-hour job).

On the brighter side, they have managed to secure a compound right next to the bridge so they could relatively easily just store the materials until they were ready for a second attempt. Security could be an issue though.

But funnily enough I suspect the problem with next Christmas is that it doesn’t really justify taking a precious Christmas slot just for this. Remember that next Christmas we will almost certainly have have another big Thameslink blockade and Network Rail is desperate to sort out Lewisham Junction before that fails spectacularly (not likely to be imminent but the longer you leave it…). I strongly suspect they are already having a bun fight over what can be included for Christmas 2016. Meanwhile, the intention to replace the bridge in question is clearly for a reason. One hopes it was not too critical a reason.

Weather forecast for the next few days is terrible, windwise.

Westcoaster
30 December 2015 at 22:36

The bridge work will not now be going ahead.
The weather situation means it’s too dangerous for the cranes to operate.

An Easter weekend looks best. Gives a similar 4 day window. Good job the points are in on the junction. Wind putting that work out would have been very bad. Looking at the twitter pictures that work is going well.

Graham Feakins
31 December 2015 at 00:09

@Anomnibus 30 Dec 13:36 – “But the real shocker was the film — I forget which video it was, so no link, sorry — that showed how OHLE was installed back in the day.” – Maybe it was this film of the 1956 electrification to Southend you watched:

The whole point is that long distance journeys over Christmas cannot be re-scheduled because most are timed to be Christmas travel. Many journeys at other times of the year can be rescheduled.

It’s not a case of numbers, it’s a matter of elasticity.

Pedantic of Purley
31 December 2015 at 06:23

Kate,

Maybe many but not all.

I can see the headlines now. Funeral fiasco as mourners are late for funeral due to rail works.

If applying for a job or university I doubt if they would reschedule because you are affected by engineering works. “I lost the chance of a dream job thanks to Network Rail”.

I think we grasped the point you are making when you first raised it. It is just that I (and I suspect many others) do not think that other times of the year are as elastic you think they are. In fact it, is probably the other way round.

If you are a few hours late for a journey over Christmas and the journey is a bit, shall we say, trying, you can generally take advantage of the rest of time remaining. In the case of appointments, job interviews, exams etc. being late by an hour renders the whole journey a waste of time and possibly life changing – and not it a good way. You can allow more time but how much time is that? There comes a point where you may need to book a hotel overnight (and hope there are places available) or get up ridiculously early – and then find another link in the transport chain hasn’t started running yet.

I think this topic is getting to the point where future comments need to add something that has not been mentioned before and not just restate the well-established arguments.

RayK
31 December 2015 at 06:30

RE Kate
‘It’s not a case of numbers, it’s a matter of elasticity.’
It IS still a case of numbers. The number of people who are unable to treat their Christmas travel elastically (alternative mode or route) is very small compared with those who *must* travel by train during an ordinary week.

Graham Feakins
31 December 2015 at 07:18

@PoP – “In the case of appointments, job interviews, exams etc. being late by an hour renders the whole journey a waste of time…” – Just as an aside, as an invigilator for many years for my Chartered Institute’s examinations, I was well versed in coping with late arrivals of at least up to an hour because of severe delays on the Central Line &c. and due allowance was made for those candidates arriving late to continue until the full examination period for those affected expired. Maybe today’s society is not so tolerant.

Greg Tingey
31 December 2015 at 09:02

Malcolm
the “Easter” break surely should be possible for a less-than-72-hour bridge replacement? ( or even less than 96 hours, or 4 days )
Other things being equal, of course ….

GF
However did we all note how the mast-pilings were put in – from a big drill on a wagon – they seemed to get it right then, though, didn’t they, unlike some work on the “GW” now, oh dear.

For what it’s worth, that link is to Part 2 of a two-part film, which shows a team installing OHLE in Scotland, during some rather poor weather.

It looks like a telecine conversion of some Super-8 film (or possibly low-quality 16mm), but it is in colour, so unusual for the period. I suspect it’s a compilation from a bunch of in-house corporate training films as some of the footage is clearly from different years, and it doesn’t quite feel like the usual BTF style, but I may be wrong.

Robert Butlin
31 December 2015 at 16:42

Maybe if the bridge replacement doesn’t happen because of the wind we can put Kate’s suggestion of starting on 4 Jan to the test [joke].

IAmHedgehog
31 December 2015 at 16:43

I spoke to the young man in the ticket office at Horley about an hour ago and he thinks it’s “unlikely” the trains will be up and running as normal on Monday morning.

[We very much prefer more reputable sources. LBM]

Anonymous
31 December 2015 at 16:58

Bridge work been cancelled due to the wind. Crane’s been removed from Old Lodge Lane now, just the big base of soil left to sort out…

Sad Fat Dad
31 December 2015 at 17:07

@IAmHedgehog.

I think the young chap at Horley ticket office is drawing his own conclusions, as the project is very much on time, and none of the project float* has been used. (*contingency time, I won’t say how much, but it’s a lot).

There is, of course, still the opportunity for things to go wrong. But I would wait for more official sources.

Edgepedia
31 December 2015 at 17:18

IAmHedgehog: If I was project manager, I would not want to convey to anyone at this stage in the programme any sense that that everything’s running along nicely. The signalling needs to be in place, tested and any bugs ironed out first…

Sad Fat Dad
31 December 2015 at 17:26

Edgepedia – project managers not advising latest project progress has been one of the main contributory factors to some of the biggest newsworthy overruns. Nobody outside the project knew it was in trouble so nothing could be done to rectify it.

Phil
31 December 2015 at 18:25

Re Sad Fat Dad

The gent in Horley ticket office is not wrong, the entire project (Purley & the bridge) had an offical contingency of 22hrs built in, none if which was used during the points work.

There is some minor work to do at the bridge site to restore it to a suitable condition for normal work (something to do with the parapets and the cable route (which had been moved off the structure ready for demolition) I believe. Work has also been done to identify if speed restrictions for certain types if train are needed on certain lines due to the non completion of the work.

As the bridge work has been cancelled the tampers have been redeployed to undertake some other work at Salfords in an extra possession and other staff have been redeployed – there was talk of seeing if they could be of use to help with the Folkestone – Dover damage.

Sunday 3rd January Buses Redhill – Horley
From 08:30 – 16:00 Buses replace trains at Redhill, Earlswood, Salfords and Horley as trains will not be able to serve these stations due to emergency engineering work.

So that is “emergency” as in “emergency gas works”.

Malcolm
31 December 2015 at 18:58

London Transport buses (all?) used to have an position on their blinds which said “RAILWAY EMERGENCY SERVICE”. I think that was used for any rail replacement service, whether pre-planned or last minute. (I think, in the spirit of “Sorry I’m not in service”, it should have read “Sorry I’m not a train”).

Malcolm
31 December 2015 at 19:03

But there is a difference between advising management of one’s own organisation (that a project is in trouble), and advising the world. (Although maybe, with the network of other affected parties which ought to also know, there is not that much difference!).

IAmHedgehog
31 December 2015 at 19:33

I may have to eat my words Monday morning.

Edgepedia
31 December 2015 at 20:54

Phil, I think the damage at Dover is beyond that a tamper could do; here’s the latest news. There’s talk of a new timetable from Monday (4 Jan), although this currently (31 December) shows trains running normally although high speed trains haven’t actually run from Folkestone since Christmas. I’m a little bemused that we don’t have a proper timetable a week after the line closed.

Edgepedia
31 December 2015 at 20:56

Sorry Phil, I re-read your comment and now think that perhaps you were where talking about re-deploying the staff.

Edgepedia
31 December 2015 at 21:08

IAmHedgehog,

From the real time trains timetable the last bus arrives at East Croydon at 4:20; 5 mins later a train from Victoria calls, and then a through train from Three Bridges calls at 4:30.

This link could be interesting Monday morning

Anonymously
31 December 2015 at 21:39

Well, it could be a lot worse (as the people of South Devon and Cornwall will happily tell you!)…..at least no stations are closed, and there are plenty of alternative routes (including HS1) for trains to take to reach Dover and the coast from London. All that competition between the SER and LCDR didn’t go to waste then, did it? ?

Let’s hope though that the damage can be repaired and the line reopened as soon as possible….

Purley Dweller
31 December 2015 at 22:32

Edgepedia – a train leaves for three bridges at 0406 as well. Due past Purley at 0410

Edgepedia
31 December 2015 at 23:06

I missed that Purley Dweller, I looked down for the last BUS, and then took the next train after that.

The first southbound train appears to be 1D06 Gatwick Express, scheduled to pass Purley at 0404 and then taking the Redhill route. The Thameslink 1W77 takes the same route six minutes later.

Searching manually (so I may have missed one) the first train taking the Quarry route is the northbound Thameslink 1W00, which passes Purley at 0558.

Graham H
31 December 2015 at 23:06

@Edgepaedia – the video suggests that the footing of the retaining wall has collapsed – no one is going to risk running a train past that. Tamping is about as useful as stopping an elephant with a wave of the hand, alas. BTw why are you surprised (perhaps you weren’t) that there is no emergency timetable in place ready for the Monday start of service; although most TOCs keep a portfolio of emergency timetables against the more obvious problems, this is a thing that has not occurred before – the timetablers that I know have spent the holiday eating their mince pies and would have been most reluctant to turn out to devise a complete new timetable for the Kent lines.

Phil
31 December 2015 at 23:16

Re P.O.P.

Well if the bridge works had gone ahead then the tamper would not have been spare to do other work. Rather than griping about the term ’emergency’ (which is only used because it’s all very last minute as far as the public are concerned), NR should be congratulated for their quick thinking, which not only prevents them paying for expensive kit and staff standing around doing nothing (as would be the case now if the Salfords work wasn’t happening), but also has the potential to get rid of the need to block the slow lines later in Janurary or Feburary.

Re Edgepedia

Yes it’s the civil engineering staff involved in the bridge demolition / abutment reconstruction / new bridge installation that NR were looking to redeploy to Kent rather than continue to pay them to stand around and do nothing. The p-way staff and tamper will be redeployed to Salfords for the same reason – namely NR are committed to paying for them regardless that the bridge job has been cancelled.

I can both congratulate Network Rail for their quick thinking and at the same time gripe about “emergency” which is misleading and introduces distrust as in “we need to close this line for emergency engineering works” when you mean “we want to close this line for an improvement opportunity that we can take advantage of at short notice”.

I have watched enough GLA transport committee meetings to see that anything other than transparent truth puts Network Rail in bad light and TfL get a much easier ride because they are basically honest and have the trust of Assembly Members. Maybe the use of “emergency” made with the best of intentions but it does Network Rail no favours.

Edgepedia
1 January 2016 at 08:52

Graham H, the line between Folkestone and Dover has closed several times in the past, so I would have thought that it was high risk and an emergency timetable would exist. My observations are that a simple hourly timetable has run since Tuesday: the hourly St Pancras circular via Ramsgate and Dover has been diverted to run via Canterbury West, an additional hourly service replaces this between Ramsgate and Dover, and the hourly stopping SEML Dover service (diverted to Victoria because of the Thameslink works) terminates at Folkestone Central, and switching from down to up line by running forward to Folkestone East.

I said I was bemused because the southeastern webpage keep referring to the national rail website, which has been wrong more times than it has been right. However, this morning they’ve uploaded a pdf of a revised timetable, and hopefully the national rail database will be corrected soon.

Greg Tingey
1 January 2016 at 10:14

Time to “dump” some containers full of heavy rubble/concrete in front of those cracks & then pour as much concrete-slurry as possible down the holes on the inside, I would have thought.
Then level up & straighten out “on top”.
Should take about a week?
Any more informed guesses than mine?

Follow-up with outer defences, later, in calmer weather, to break up waves approaching the weaker points.

The other danger when using the term emergency engineering works is that it suggests that the railway is getting to the stage where it is dangerous to operate and I am sure you wouldn’t want to convey that impression when it is not true. When, many years ago, I worked in the rail industry the term “emergency engineering works” would almost exclusively be used as a euphemism for “to repair a broken rail” and was not used indiscriminately.

I appreciate that this seems like a small point to you but it is the sort of thing that causes people like Val Shawcross to go on about how “Network Rail just don’t get it”. Although, in fairness, it is the TOCs who actually put the message out so you could argue that that it is down to them and not Network Rail at all.

Malcolm
1 January 2016 at 12:16

@PoP I see what you mean about using the term “emergency”. However, this provokes the challenge of what simple phrase should be used to get the message across to the public that this closure is occurring for sensible reasons (which can be explained in detail to those who want to know), but that unfortunately it was not possible to give the normal amount of advance warning about it (for reasons which can also be explained).

lmm
1 January 2016 at 14:26

“Unforseen circumstances”? Even saying “closed due to high winds” would have the advantage of being technically true.

Purley Dweller
1 January 2016 at 20:17

Say what it is. Short notice engineering work using staff who are no longer required on the big jobs. Looks efficient then as well.

IAmHedgehog
1 January 2016 at 23:24

So what is actually happening at Salfords? I infer that this is work that was supposed to happen later this month or in February?

RayK
2 January 2016 at 08:22

AFAICT there is no mention of the Redhill to Horley RRB’s onhttp://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/today.aspx
I would have expected this to be there. Perhaps all the people who keep it updated are on holiday. It looks as though this is being left to Southern to keep their customers informed. If this is so it reduces the effectiveness of the Service Disruptions page. I thought this was supposed to bring everything together in one place

Pedantic of Purley
2 January 2016 at 10:13

RayK,

Perhaps it is not shown on the link for today’s disruptions because it is scheduled to take place tomorrow. Try the same link tomorrow (Sunday).

As of yesterday Journey Planner was updated to reflect this.

T33
2 January 2016 at 10:23

@RayK apart from stating that the disruption is between East Croydon an Redhill – almost everything that follows tells you how to get from the Coast or Gatwick to London via East Grinstead etc. Nothing to tell you how to get from Redhill route stations – as usual we are mushrooms left to fend for ourselves – fortunately as a “self-help group” we seem to do that quite well now 🙂

RayK
2 January 2016 at 14:48

PoP
You are of course right. When I checked on ‘Future engineering works’ the details were there for all to see. The trains are running as timetabled between Redhill and Horley but not calling at either Earlswood or Salfords; for which the rrb service is provided.

T33 Just wondered for a moment whether self help mushrooms was a variation on pick-your-own. Agreed that we do quite well with mutual help.

The work is to remove a long standing temporary speed restriction in the vicinity of Salfords yard. In the normal course of things this would probably have occurred at some point in the next three months or so, i.e. whenever the next suitable possession of the slows was booked in – but by taking advantage of an opportunity to get it done now not only removes a constraint on running a punctual service, but also potentially frees up staff to deal with other defects later in the year.

From what I can see, not that many people use the rail replacement buses. The main flow seems to be Purley – East Croydon and vice versa. I expect the majority of people are not travelling or just catching ordinary buses. The 12-car trains to East Grinstead (for non-stop bus to Gatwick) were only lightly used but there were reports of the hourly Victoria-Gatwick via Horsham being very busy indeed.

As far as I can tell all the rail replacement buses to and from East Croydon were standard London buses complete with Oyster reader (inactive). No attempt is made to get passengers to validate their Oystercards at the relevant station – in any case a bit difficult at the end of their journey once they have got off the bus. For the TOC, it I think would have been better to have the card readers active then (at least when Oyster is not down) they would have got some money back from Oystercard and other wave and pay card holders – but then Network Rail is probably picking up the bill so why should they care?

The northbound bus stop for Reedham does have a sign posted on the shelter to show it is the designated stop but it is very easy not to notice. It is also not the nearest stop on the Brighton Road to the station.

The bridge worksite has been partially cleared and full pedestrian access restored.

The weather has been largely benign but that is not what was forecast. So, in retrospect, the wrong decision was probably made but the correct decision was probably made on the basis of the forecast at the time.

Southern Heights (Light Railway)
3 January 2016 at 10:19

@Edgepedia: The closure near Dover is between Samphire Hoe and the harbour? I initally thought it was on the Folkestone side of Samphire Hoe….

Anomnibus
3 January 2016 at 21:14

Reclaiming the land for, say, a nature park would provide protection from the sea in future. I can imagine the RSPB being interested in such a project.

Something similar might work for the Dawlish sea wall too, though I suspect the locals might object.

If the UK’s climate is indeed set to become more energetic in future, solutions like this may be needed sooner rather than later. So Crossrail 2 may have just found a solution for where to dump their spoil.

MikeP
4 January 2016 at 09:26

Seems Purley wasn’t so much pointless as signal-less this morning

Purley Dweller
4 January 2016 at 09:55

Looking at the running records of the trains I usually catch it looks like it was Stoats Nest causing the issue rather than Purley.

Anonymous
4 January 2016 at 11:21

As a professional engineer (not in civils though) I love the idea we turn things off for a bit of a giggle or at a time of our own benefit.

Projects are run by the numbers. How much material used, design criteria, timing to minimise costs to the organisation.

Often there is no ideal solution. A least bad delivery of essential work is still the best option.

Long ago I realised, as an engineer, the best response the general public can deliver is indifference. They will not notice improvements or even if they do then comment on them positively. The solace is in the numbers, in this case passengers moved or delays reduced.

Phil
4 January 2016 at 13:07

The problems at Purley this morning were down to 2 separate track circuit failures (a defective location case to location case cable core and the other being a defective rails – location case cable) and a points problem. The track circuit failures were I believe unrelated to the Christmas works and only came to light as the possession was being cleared, though the points problem could possibly be said to be as a result of the project works.

Henning Makholm
4 January 2016 at 14:23

“three months after the Clapham rail” should be the Clapham rail crash, I suppose.
[Yes. Sorry. Now corrected. PoP]

I am told that lorries are now removing the ballast for the crane base from site. Apparently, according to one of the workers there, they will not be attempting this bridge replacement again until next Christmas.

Purley Dweller
4 January 2016 at 19:16

The spoil had been moved from under the bridge by 11 am. It was in a big pile on Old Lodge Lane. With any luck it looks like it should reopen this week. There is a sign on the fences explaining that the work has been postponed but not giving a date.

IAmHedgehog
4 January 2016 at 22:11

Well, I was delighted to get to work this morning.

Graham Feakins
6 January 2016 at 02:45

@Anomnibus – before Christmas, you drew our attention to the Health & Safety, apparent lack of, aspect to the overhead wiring procedures and a few related clips were produced.

Just to show how progress I think had been made by the time of the WCML electrification, just look at this brief clip of the construction of Battersea power station (starts a couple of seconds in):

@PoP – On 3rd January, you said this:”From what I can see, not that many people use the rail replacement buses. The main flow seems to be Purley – East Croydon and vice versa. I expect the majority of people are not travelling or just catching ordinary buses. The 12-car trains to East Grinstead (for non-stop bus to Gatwick) were only lightly used but there were reports of the hourly Victoria-Gatwick via Horsham being very busy indeed.”

May I just say that I immediately deduced from that that intending passengers using Gatwick far preferred to travel by train quite a long way around via Horsham and on journeys taking significantly longer than the direct railway route during the disruption, rather than travel e.g. to/from East Grinstead for replacement buses serving Gatwick.

I suppose you realise that it can be further deduced that the welcome inference is that folk would be content to be diverted from e.g. Brighton via a restored link between Lewes and Uckfield if the main BML is obstructed somewhere rather than board a replacement bus (financial saving in bus hire to start with). We haven’t seen the end of line closures on the BML for a long time to come, I feel confident.

I return to one original point that the major passenger traffic from Uckfield was southwards prior to closure of the link and not towards London (Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge were the magnets but there were through peak trains via East Croydon and Lewes to Brighton). What statisticians seem constantly to forget when it comes to railways is that a modernised or reopened railway can generate its own traffic from far and wide and not just the towns and villages themselves on the route because it’s jolly well attractive, as witness The Borders railway reopening in recent times or the ‘sparks effect’ in past times (there’s no time here to await the affect of electrification, if any, of the GWR…). Railway stations tend to have car parks for personal interchange between train and car and many would like to use them rather then drive all the way, e.g. to Brighton environs from Uckfield via Lewes or Brighton/Lewes to Tunbridge Wells. Hint.

Gio
6 January 2016 at 08:32

@Graham Feakins I agree.
I believe that the NR website stated that the rrb from E Grinstead and the long winded rail journey to Victoria would both take 90 minutes, so it’s no surprise that people would opt for the single, slightly more hassle-free, rail journey which explains why those trains were rammed.
I think it also has to be considered with works like this is that the poor unfortunate foreign tourist coming to the UK for Christmas would have been completely unaware of this blockade, and would therefore have opted for the train, especially if travelling with lots of luggage.
I had friends who booked their UK holiday during this Christmas period and ended up forking out £140 in booked cabs for the return journey to Gatwick. Having endured the misery of rail replacement buses over the years, which are never frequent enough by any means, I think an expensive cab was unfortunately their only option.
For future blockades, I do hope that the TOCs arrange more direct, albeit slow, diverted trains to Victoria or wherever, as that is clearly the means of transport that the inconvenienced tourist and commuter would prefer.

Pedantic of Purley
6 January 2016 at 08:36

Graham Feakins,

May I just say that I immediately deduced from that that intending passengers using Gatwick far preferred to travel by train quite a long way around via Horsham and on journeys taking significantly longer than the direct railway route during the disruption

This seems to have been the case with Southern at one point almost pleading on their website for people to consider the alternative of going via East Grinstead. I am sure if it were not for the infrastructure between Dorking and Horsham only supporting a very restrictive service they would have run at least 2tph rather than 1tph. I forget whether it is signalling or power supply that so limits the service.

There is little doubt that many passengers to and from Brighton would be much happier with a rail replacement via Lewes (or Arundel) rather than a bus but the cost would have to take into account not only the reopening but also the upgrading of the relevant line (in the case of via Uckfield that would be power, remove single track sections, signalling). As stated in the article and as Graham H often points out, it is almost impossible to make a business case for this limited use – much as we would all like it. It is not just passengers as such. I have heard that Brighton Council is very concerned with the effect of substitute bus services at weekends on their tourist trade and argues that there should be a train service even if it takes much longer due to diversions. Their argument is that leisure traffic is not so time sensitive but it is sensitive to a change from train to bus.

We haven’t seen the end of line closures on the BML for a long time to come, I feel confident.

Well, for starters, they still have to replace the bridge at Old Lodge Lane! For reasons given in the article, I think it unlikely there will be anything other than the very rare closure between London and Gatwick Airport. South of Three Bridges is a different matter but you could argue there is already a diversion route for that – but of course you hit the issue of level crossings on the coastal route.

I have emphasised on a number of occasions the importance of taking into account that in rural areas people drive to stations and are generally not too particular which station that is. But, as stated in the Uckfield article, this can work both ways! In any case it does nothing to advance the cause of re-opening Uckfield – Lewes. In many ways it makes the argument worse. If people start their journey by car then where is the great hardship in driving to Lewes or Uckfield. Why would re-opening the railway be a better idea than building a large car park at Uckfield and converting the car park at Lewes to a multi-storey one? – as done at Haywards Heath.

How much traffic would be generated by a re-opened line or “the sparks effect” is a big unknown. I suspect the sparks effect would not be that dramatic given the similarity, as far as the customer is concerned, between the class 171 and the class 377. See earlier discussion on how estimates of use have turned out to be fairly accurate overall with some schemes being overestimated and others underestimated. Without an additional factor (such as housing development in Uckfield or a very attractive park-and-ride being built) even if you doubled or tripled projective usage I doubt if a business case could be made.

Graham H
6 January 2016 at 09:16

@Graham F – I am sorry that you don’t believe any of us when we say that the business case for re-opening a line a s a diversionary route is zero; some of us have actually had to deal with the issue as a serious professional exercise (Settle-Carlisle in my case). Just repeat after me (1) diverted passengers do no generate a penny of extra revenue (2) in the Lewes-Uckfield case, the costs of re-opening would pay for a fleet of about 3000 dedicated taxis on permanent standby to give free travel to any who wanted it. And as for the sparks effect, as I have repeatedly explained, making the business case would require the entire population of Lewes and Uckfield to visit each other by train at least once a month….

Malcolm
6 January 2016 at 09:49

Graham H: I don’t think Graham F used the phrase “business case” at all in his post. He was making a point about how useful an Uckfield rebuild might be for diversionary purposes, which I think is correct. But you are right, of course, to remind us that the value of such occasional use (so costly to provide for, and so costly to actually use) is generally negative; in this case quite strongly so.

Some things (the National Gallery?) are worth providing or retaining in spite of a total lack of financial justification. In my view, ease of access to Brighton three times a decade is not such a public good, though some people see it differently.

timbeau
6 January 2016 at 09:55

Another reason people will have used the Victoria – Horsham – Gatwick trains is because they would have been advertised at Victoria in big friendly capital letters as going to Gatwick. The notoriety of rail replacement buses – which all too often require a game of hunt the thimble to find where they are supposed to go from, and then fail to turn up anyway – is unlikely to make many people opt for them if there is a train which will take you all the way.

The East Grinstead route may have been more useful for passengers from Croydon to Gatwick.

@Graham H – diverting passengers may not generate any extra revenue – but it may protect revenue that would otherwise be lost as people decide to drive, or not travel at all, rather than use a rail replacement bus.

Graham H
6 January 2016 at 10:00

@timbeau – true, but a very small sum in the scheme of things – your revenue exposure is limited to a fraction of the day’s takings on a small number of days pa (and those usually the quietest days of the year, too)

lmm
6 January 2016 at 11:25

If rail replacement taxis are so affordable then I have to ask why they aren’t provided more often.

Some things (the National Gallery?) are worth providing or retaining in spite of a total lack of financial justification.

In old school thinking yes. But nowadays there is plausible financial justification in the making London more attractive to foreign tourists and providing the desired cultural environment to attract vital people to London rather than another capital city elsewhere in the world to add to the country’s wealth.

There is of course more than financial justification but, in essence, it is a different problem of a known benefit, the value of which is almost impossible to calculate.

Londoner
6 January 2016 at 11:40

@Imm Because rail replacement buses are even cheaper for an reasonable number of people travelling…

There are some places I believe I’ve read on here where there are parliamentary rail replacement taxis available on request because so few people use them it’s the cheapest way to provide the service.

Graham H
6 January 2016 at 11:55

@lmm – what I had in mind was comparing the cost of maintaining a diversionary route with some of the other options available to achieve the same end; taxis were a deliberately extreme option – as Londoner says, there are also other, cheaper, options, which any rational person would choose.

@Londoner – I believe the Watford West replacement service eventually became one such, and possibly also the Tilbury Town -Tilbury Riverside “statutory” bus service.

Malcolm
6 January 2016 at 12:46

… and Newhaven Marine, which is nearer to “A Study in Sussex”, and which could conceivably be a possible destination for trains from Uckfield. Apparently it has lately been removed from the fares database, thus economising in taxis…

Malcolm
6 January 2016 at 12:57

In a ruthlessly commercial world, when a line is closed, passengers would just be told to make their own arrangements (as any passenger who wishes to travel on Christmas day already is, effectively). I doubt if any of the replacement arrangements ever make a profit, or come near to covering even their marginal costs.

Presumably they are provided either because the franchise terms require it, or because of a perception that the company would be even more unpopular and unable to retain a (generally profitable) franchise without them. (Or because the company management is somehow disinterestedly benevolent, which would probably be a breach of duty to shareholders).

Anonymous
6 January 2016 at 18:40

I do think the buses from East Grinstead were well organised; two or three coaches were standing waiting as the trains came in, the platform was literally lined with hired in staff to marshal people and clear instructions as to which bus to get on were being announced at result intervals. There was also a marquee for waiting passengers.

Malcolm
6 January 2016 at 18:51

Anonymous at 18:40: That’s good to hear.

Unfortunately, the public view on acceptability of bustitution is based, not on good examples like this, but on bad ones like PoP’s mention of Reedham. Part of a general rule which says that you can do things right any number of times without much impact, but if you get it wrong, it is noticed and stays noticed.

Anonymously
6 January 2016 at 20:44

Speaking of Newhaven Marine and ‘rail replacement taxis’, this amusing video shows one such punter attempting to utilise it:

The Tilbury Riverside bus service is alive and well, providing a link to the Gravesend ferry. Ensignbus route 99 runs every half-hour, although I can’t establish if it is commercial or subsidised.

Graham H
6 January 2016 at 23:30

@Anonymously – lovely, err, I suppose… (My abiding memory of Newhaven marine is of the launch point for school holidays to Switzerland (!) via Paris and in particular, one trip with a friend who is now a much respected banker but who took the opportunity to over indulge on the ferry. It took us so long to extract him at Dieppe that the customs had gone and we caught the paris train by the skin of our teeth).

@MoK – good to hear (at one time, it was down to a minibus on demand).

Graham Feakins
7 January 2016 at 04:01

Just had this thought re. Lewes – Uckfield. You know how banks &c. are fined for misconduct, well, in my view, there was (a) misconduct to close the link in the first place and (b) there was misconduct to single stretches of line that were originally double (so where PoP says above “remove single track sections”, he means re-double). So, how about fining the original perpetrators of these transgressions? That could help pay for the reinstatement required.

FACT (for Graham H’s benefit – tee-hee): This is solely an early post 12th Night business case thought but I wonder whether it’s ever been considered or tried. I realise that the Statute of Limitations might apply.

timbeau
7 January 2016 at 07:04

@Graham F
“the Statute of Limitations might apply”
It is also difficult to prosecute defunct organisations (like British Rail) or people (like Richard Beeching)

Anonymously
7 January 2016 at 09:51

@timbeau…..Except Beeching had nothing to do with the closure of L-U; it was never listed in his report.

Whereas East Sussex County Council *did* have something to do with it, since it was their plan for a road that would sever the line which started the chain of events that led to the line’s closure. And they still exist ?.

But I fear we are now skirting the realms of fantasy in discussing this……

timbeau
7 January 2016 at 09:58

Fining a body in public ownership (nationalised industry, local or national government, etc) makes no economic or logical sense, as it is simply money going round in circles.

Graham H
7 January 2016 at 09:59

@Graham F -of course; putting my Stalin hat on, I shall be setting about killing (no need for boring trials, just meet the death quota) not just those who are unParty but their relatives and friends, too, and indeed anyone else whom I dislike or even might dislike had I known them.

This month’s Today’s Railways has a useful letter arguing for the re-opening of every single railway line that existed before Beeching. How one longs for the recreation of the ’40s and ’50s, not just for the sake of travelling behind an ageing Worsdell tank as it pauses at Coldstream to collect this month’s passenger, but all that lovely smug, drunk management, jobsworth unionism, shot industry, gratuitous sexism, racism and violence. Many were poor and everyone knew their place, especially the poor. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive”

More seriously, I used to get some very odd looks from older colleagues when I remarked that Beeching had been asked the wrong question: Not “what is the core profitable railway?” (there probably never has been one), but “What do we want to buy and why?” Given the random nature of the point at which the closure process stopped and politicians’ inability to stop paying subsidy for ever and a day, I have had the last laugh every time…

Robert Butlin
7 January 2016 at 22:50

Does anyone know if the newly announced engineering works blocking all lines on 10 and 31 Jan are bridge related or something different?

Purley Dweller
8 January 2016 at 16:09

They aren’t newly announced. They have been in the train plan for 3 months. I don’t doubt they are related to the Christmas work but someone with more knowledge than me will tell you about that.

Sad Fat Dad
8 January 2016 at 17:04

It will be the follow up works for the track, particularly the tamping.

Robert Butlin
8 January 2016 at 19:34

Thank you both.

Paul
9 January 2016 at 00:02

Another common feature of follow up work is completing the rail joint welding. Often there’ll be a few temporary clamped joints in the layout on first hand back into use…

Purley Dweller
11 January 2016 at 16:28

Just walked through old lodge lane bridge. Should be open to road traffic very shortly. Minutes rather than hours.

Kate
18 January 2016 at 10:27

08:28 from the Sussex Coast arrived at 10:02 instead of 8:28 this morning. It’s getting increasingly hard to maintain the fiction that the BML south of Croydon doesn’t need major upgrade.

Kate
18 January 2016 at 10:28

Sorry, they are arrival times at East Croydon

Graham H
18 January 2016 at 10:40

@Kate – well, it depends on what was the reason for your delay. If it was “one under” or a rolling stock failure, then no amount of upgrading the infrastructure would make a ha’p’orth of difference.

Pedantic of Purley
18 January 2016 at 10:56

Kate,

It’s getting increasingly hard to maintain the fiction that the BML south of Croydon doesn’t need major upgrade.

I find this baffling. Everyone knows the BML needs a major upgrade south of Croydon. It needs one north of Croydon even more and that should sensibly be tackled as soon as possible. A major upgrade is exactly what is happening but it will probably take at least ten years to complete. One could do it in less time but it would be more disruptive and cause major budgetary headaches – basically the money has to come out of Network Rail’s normal funds unless George wants to throw money at it.

I continually am at a loss to provide a theory as to why you think things are not being done on the Brighton Main Line. Maybe you don’t believe things are being upgraded unless there are physically extra tracks and obvious heavy engineering? There is a lot of upgrading going on anyway e.g. signalling, depots at Three Bridges, new stock due for Thameslink. Some will take place in the next year or so (e.g. new platform at Redhill) and there was a massive upgrade to Gatwick Airport a couple of Christmases ago.

So I don’t understand this fiction about the BML not needing a major upgrade.

Ironically, I suspect it was partly due to upgrade works at the weekend (probably to signalling) that meant the delay that you reported occurred.

ngh
18 January 2016 at 10:59

Re Graham H,

Looks like signalling issues at Balcombe

In General. #1 reason on Sussex routes for delays is rolling stock issues…
Train Crew (usually lack thereof) & “Trespass” also in the top 5 reasons.

Kit Green
18 January 2016 at 11:05

Real Time Trains shows that some northbound Thameslink services were terminated at Haywards Heath: “This service was cancelled between Haywards Heath and Bedford due to a signalling problem (track circuit failure) (IC).”
GX, SN & TL services were also disrupted, with Kate’s train severely delayed before Balcombe where it was then held for about 20 minutes.

The route was therefore suffering from very real signal infrastructure problems on this occasion.

Walthamstow Writer
18 January 2016 at 15:09

@ PoP – the problem is one of perception over reality. Yes plenty of work is being done but a lot of it is not visible to people. If the service is dire, even with new assets, then people will remain dissatisfied and, worse, may start to question the value of what has been done because “my journey is still awful”. The fact that MPs and local politicians from London to Sussex now appear to be in a permanent rage about the rail service is doing no one any favours. It was featured on the Sunday Politics London yesterday and I understand Mr Cameron is having his ear bent today. I actually think the problems lie somewhere between the DfT and TSGN and not so much Network Rail (London Bridge’s woes notwithstanding). TSGN just don’t seem to be competent and I don’t know why they are struggling quite so badly – all TOCs seem to have “episodes” but TSGN seem to have a never ending drama.

ngh
18 January 2016 at 16:30

Re WW,

On Southern the average total reactionary delay is about 3 times primary delay for an incident compared to nationally where reactionary delay is just less than primary delay. Nowhere else in the country is quite like it.

Hence the discussion on the London Bridge thread this time last year about non linear dynamics and whether the solutions converge towards recovery or not as the above metric shows in the Southern case.

Walthamstow Writer
18 January 2016 at 17:27

@ Ngh – Having checked the definitions for those terms it’s similar in concept to LU’s attribution process but LU uses lost customer hours to value the disbenefit to passengers. It doesn’t attempt to deal with “reactionary delay” as LU’s network is much simpler and doesn’t have mixed traffic types. And before anyone tells me I know the NR attribution system came first and the same consultants “resold” it to LU for PPP.

One might hope that someone, somewhere has done or is doing some detailed modelling and root cause analysis around that apparent divergence for “South Central” compared to elsewhere. It’s not as if there aren’t complicated and busy bits of the network elsewhere. I also wonder whether / how the issue was reflected in the ITT and also bidder responses for the TSGN franchise. Seems to me, at face value, that the divergence is a material factor affecting the franchisee’s ability to deliver a given level of service and certainly in how they need to respond to failures and restore the service.

RayL
18 January 2016 at 19:27

Whatever the problems on the Brighton Main Line this morning they were made worse for passengers by a lack of information and the appalling announcements. I was in the main booking hall at East Croydon from 0900 to 0925. The departure displays were full of ‘Delayed’ trains. A screen in the main bank that could have been giving useful information about what on earth was going on was left with that wretched message about ‘Keep your belongings with you at all times’.

At intervals a male voice with bad articulation, their mouth too close to the microphone and speaking too fast, bawled messages that were essentially unintelligable. (And it’s not the system – pre-recorded announcements by a voice artist are much clearer).

It was a situation that called for a manager to be on patrol, both to assess the situation and to take feedback from passengers, yet there was no-one (I asked).

There were many, simple, things that could have been done today to make the situation much better for passengers but it seems that nobody who was providing the service this morning could be bothered.

Pedantic of Purley
18 January 2016 at 19:38

RayL,

You are not the first person I have heard or read recently commenting about the problem of human announcers at times of disruption. As you say, it is not the PA system – automated announcements are fine.

On the stations they seem to have lost the art of speaking clearly under stress. For a start, you need to speak far more slowly than you think you do and with pauses. I can only presume training for this has been cut or never existed. 999 operators and many other people manage this fine. As was said to me, the trouble is we can get all the announcements right that don’t matter too much (everything is running normally and those “information” announcements) but the moment they become important and people actually want to listen to them they become garbled.

Worse still, the bigger the station, the poorer quality it seems to be. The lovely new station at Reading is totally let down by this.

RayL
18 January 2016 at 19:52

One simple improvement for these amateur announcers is that they wear closed-ear headphones fed from a microphone at the booking hall or station platform. That way they hear what the passengers hear. Anyone who has tried this will know that speech becomes slower (because you wait for the echo to die away) and clearer. It’s the same ‘foldback’ principle that bands and singers have used on stage since the 1970s

Sad Fat Dad
18 January 2016 at 20:25

@WW 1727. The root cause analysis modelling has been done, several times. It turns out that the BML *is* the busiest / most complicated part of the network in combination. Yes there are busier lines (not many though) and yes more complicated (not very many at all), but none have that level of busy-ness and complication at the same time.

Add in record passenger numbers, an increasing level of cautiousness in driving style over the past 15 years (reducing ability to recover minor delays), a shortage of train crew, a couple of new timetables and a management team that is, frankly, demoralised to the core as it is slated from every direction, and you’d be hard pressed to run a punctual railway if the infrastructure was perfect. Which it isn’t, although it is no less perfect than most of the rest of the national network.

Note that I deliberately omitted London Bridge, as it isn’t an issue. Far from it: it is by far the best performing part of the Southern network, and has been for nearly 11 months.

Walthamstow Writer
18 January 2016 at 21:01

@ SFD – well it is at least encouraging that people have done the analysis and more than once. Interesting that South Central is the most complex bit of the network. That poses some interesting questions about the prospects of what TfL could do if there was a takeover. It also, to my mind, raises some extra questions about how Thameslink can possibly perform even if London Bridge and the core perform flawlessly. The other thing that you’ve said that tends to just be “acknowledged and then people move on” is rising demand. Clearly that is a positive thing for the railway but it brings its own set of problems that will keep worsening until something substantial happens to create a capacity step change. I know timetables can be changed to be robust etc. as short term steps. Has there been an action plan to work through the results of the analysis (other than the revised timetables)?

Clearly TSGN are trying to recruit and train drivers but some of the rest is down to the senior management to deliver changes no matter how hard they are criticised. I know they’re human beings and have feelings but they are paid decent money so they need to get delivering. Easy for me to say but it won’t be done by anyone else.

Graham Feakins
19 January 2016 at 03:42

@WW – Between you and SFD in the comment before, you have both crystallised a certain reality that is the Brighton Main Line.

I add here what I think is perhaps one reason why, as SFD says, there is “a management team that is, frankly, demoralised to the core…”. Personally, I also find that comment dispiriting but I can well believe it and I would love to be able to assist where I can.

Having said that, my belief is that, before the merger of Southern with First Capital Connect, Southern had a fine and experienced management team with supportive staff, as I have witnessed on many occasions when I met them. As part of that, they involved individuals of public transport representative organisations such as rail user groups from all over their territory in regular Q&A seminars and we all got to know each other. On the other hand, it was FCC that, again in my view, justifiably had about the worst reputation going and I certainly can’t recall any significant public forum of the type that Southern organised (I have witnessed some nasty public meetings with the local, angry public on one side and some poor railway representative on the other taking the flak (or not); that’s why Southern devised their forums generally with just a single representative from each organisation).

When the two were merged to form TSGN – and I am making an informed guess here – a mistake was made in retaining poor elements of the FCC management team to such an extent that their influence has overridden that of the Southern management. This might not have been deliberate if some senior Southern folk decided to take the chance to retire but other experiences suggest that it is not just that. For example, new names appear on emails replacing respected senior Southern personnel in the equivalent post.

The trouble is, many of those Southern personnel have either left or been forced to move to another office remote from their Croydon office, presumably amongst FCC strangers. The Croydon office hasn’t been vacated, however, so it can’t be that.

SFD also mentions “an increasing level of cautiousness in driving style over the past 15 years (reducing ability to recover minor delays)”.

By coincidence, before I read the above, I sent an email tonight which included this passage: “I have related to Southern a number of times over recent years that I can tell a recently-passed out driver on my trains from an old hand simply by the driving techniques out of North Dulwich. To put that another way, once they have their full complement of drivers and they have all become old hands, then maybe the running times and timetable can be sharpened up again.”

Spooky, eh?

Greg Tingey
19 January 2016 at 09:18

PoP
Yes, we were discussing this on Thursday, were we not?
Also, as Ray L says, often the “individual” announcers are far too loud – to the point of causing physical pain to the the hearers.
E.G. Victoria Underground, approx 15,24 hrs, Wednesday afternoon – I reckon well over 100Dba – I was actually disoriented, & stopped dead, whilst walking towards the exit-gates.
This cannot be a “good thing” & I suspect, is completely contrary to all H&S regulations.
How long before LUL staff suffer significant hearing-loss, incidentally?

Well I know that on many occasions both in the pub and on this forum (when we let you) the subject comes up. Whether there was an actual discussion or not is open for … er, discussion – but not here.

Kate
19 January 2016 at 14:28

The problems at times of disruption is that announcers tend to rely on the information systems which are wrong. My journey last Thursday was no better than yesterday’s. We spent half an hour on East Croydon trying to find a train to Blackfriars (or just London Bridge) being sent from platform to platform always AFTER the train had left. We were not alone.

If people think Southern management is demoralised, they ought to think of the morale of passengers because the service is dire and getting worse.

By major work on the BML I mean extra metal as a relief route – either BML2 or something similar. It’s becoming increasingly clear that BML is running so close to capacity that even minor incidents can snowball into something major.

Pedantic of Purley
19 January 2016 at 15:09

Close to capacity as in close to current capacity not as in close to potential capacity.

Capacitywise and reliabilitywise, south of East Croydon is not a major problem and nothing that can’t be relatively easily fixed. If you want a solution to a problem you have to tackle the issues causing a problem. Tackling different issues doesn’t really help much.

Graham H
19 January 2016 at 16:28

@PoP 🙂 Indeed, BML2 seems to be the usual case of a solution going around in search of a problem. (And if the first problem you find has already been solved, then you go off and find another with a bigger price tag….)

Greg Tingey
19 January 2016 at 16:57

PoP
Indeed. If you’ve fixed Windmill Bridge – E Croydon ( in plan) & the layout @ Purley, discussed here, that “merely” leaves Stoat’s Nest & there I suspect that “slow-to fast” flvovers in both directions, where the Quarry line ( =fast) crosses over the Redhill lines (=slow) would give just that added flexibility without too much extra cost?
Presumably to be discussed in your next in this series?

Anonymously
19 January 2016 at 17:14

Reading all of the above, might I suggest that the decision to merge the TLGN and Southern franchises now seems to have been a big mistake (to add to the litany of previous privatisation-related mistakes since 1994)? It always struck me as slightly illogical to merge both when only a minority of Southern routes were going to be diverted through the TL core.

Following on from what Graham Feakins has said, it now appears that the dodgy management and customer service of FCC has simply been transferred over wholesale to include Southern as well (which pre-merger seems to have been well regarded; I cannot comment on personal experience since I rarely used it). This is despite the fact that the takeover was *the other way round* (i.e. Govia, which already operated Southern, took over the TLGN franchise from FCC)! So can anyone else here explain why Southern’s ‘good’ management didn’t takeover TL/GN wholesale and improve it? This is what I and many passengers (and I suppose the DfT as well) were expecting when the franchises merged.

Would it be too daring or radical to suggest that the Southern franchise should be spilt away again from the rest, come renewal time in 2021?

Kate
19 January 2016 at 17:49

I’m not convinced many passengers would have said Southern were “well regarded”. Over-crowding has been a growing problem. Reliability has always been a bit dodgy. Staff helpfulness on key stations has been waning. Perhaps the most people might have said was “better than SWT”.

Over the years some of the long-distance franchises have been unpopular. Virgin went through a very dodgy patch on WCML before getting things into some sort of even keel. National Express were stripped of ECML in 2009.

But the key commuter routes carry vastly more passengers. If BML/TL continues to be problematic, the sheer number of people affected means it will become a political problem.

I disagree with PoP. The sorts of works planned on BML in the vicinity of Croydon and further south might add capacity but if that capacity is then used the works won’t improve reliability. On a complex line, reliability requires significant spare capacity to recover from minor delays without a cascade effect. It’s what we are seeing at present with stretches of the line operating at capacity. So the improvements planned could deliver the needed extra capacity for expected increases in demand, or they could provide a buffer for reliability and resilience, but I don’t think they can do both.

Graham H
19 January 2016 at 17:54

@Greg T – Indeed, at the risk of anticipating what PoP might say in the future, I would like to suggest that the start of a rational approach to addressing capacity issues on BML might be to list in order of impact the bottlenecks that require tackling. That list might go something like:

Others might produce a different list in a different order, but on the basis of what has been said/is available so far and is in hand, the relief from BML2 comes a very long way down the shopping list, and for the two schemes south of Purley on which it might impact, other solutions are feasible and cheaper. [To note that BML2 does zilch for Brighton Station* approaches}.

*Or Brighton Train Station as we must call it these days…

ngh
19 January 2016 at 17:59

Re Anonymously,

The TSGN franchise started out with just the TGN (ex FCC) bit for the first 9 months so many of the FCC staff were in there first so some of the existing southern staff lost out. (Interesting a number of them appear to be reappearing together for the start of a future franchise up north shortly)

DfT needed to merge TL and Southern as it was probably the only way to make things work during the London Bridge rebuild, create a new timetable which works for passengers not competing companies and stopped the TOCs competing on fares which meant more DfT subsidy.

Lots of existing Southern London Bridge services (effectively 12 tph) will transfer to Thameslink but logistically will have to run with new stock before transfer and then there is the issue of drivers training them transferring them between TOCs etc so DfT decided merger was the was to go. There are also effectively changes to working practices on swapping to Thameslink (DOO for example) so multiple companies might have made things worse.

Post rebuild and settling down Southern and GatEx could be split off again. Though if TfL take over the metro services ex Thameslink there wouldn’t be that much left. 18tph peak into Victoria and Coastway services so a very small TOC.

But then there is the need to manage the future East Croydon etc rebuild so may be not…

ngh
19 January 2016 at 18:18

Re Kate,

” On a complex line, reliability requires significant spare capacity to recover from minor delays without a cascade effect. It’s what we are seeing at present with stretches of the line operating at capacity. So the improvements planned could deliver the needed extra capacity for expected increases in demand, or they could provide a buffer for reliability and resilience, but I don’t think they can do both.”

That is where a fair number of us will disagree with you, there is quite a lot of spare capacity in the system at the moment it just that performance is very limited by certain bottlenecks. The plans for bottleneck removal also reduce a lot of the complexity (for example the plans for Windmill Bridge Jn with more grade separation) which is where the cascade reduction / mitigation comes in will come in, the complexity is being designed out. For example at Windmill Bridge Junction / East Croydon late running Northbound services can cause issues for Southbound services post rebuild they won’t, thus it will be far harder for delays to cascade.

If you mean spare capacity as in far fewer trains so 5 minute headways to enable time to be made up which will never actually happen because of speed limits and cost of doing it – who is going to agree to double fares to pay for that?

Purley Dweller
19 January 2016 at 18:24

The merger has been an absolute disaster in customer service terms. Southern were never perfect but they usually sorted out the issues. They had an excellent online booking service and things generally seemed to be working. The staff at the two stations I use were mostly excellent. Since the takeover customer services has taken a dive. I have still not received a delay repay from November that they disputed. They have replaced the excellent online booking engine with one that isn’t as good. Gold record cards used to come out the next day now they take weeks, the rules on collection of key tickets mean that I had to make a journey to Redhill on Christmas Eve by car to place my ticket on the reader rather than it being done the day after purchase as previously. The only thing that hasn’t got worse are the poor put upon staff at Purley and Redhill who are on the receiving end of the flak without having the power to fix anything. They remain mostly excellent.

Anonymously
19 January 2016 at 19:45

@ngh

‘DfT needed to merge TL and Southern as it was probably the only way to make things work during the London Bridge rebuild, create a new timetable which works for passengers not competing companies and stopped the TOCs competing on fares which meant more DfT subsidy.’

And in just that one paragraph you neatly summarise the madness of the railway world we live in today ☹️.

Any residual ‘non-TL’ services on Southern will still be more extensive compared with, for example, Chiltern or c2c. Otherwise*, you could merge them with Southeastern and/or SWT to create something almost resembling the Southern railway of 90 years ago?

*There’s always re-nationalisation, of course, but let’s not go there ?….

Dr Richards Beeching
19 January 2016 at 19:51

@ Mr G H 17:54

If you say there is a bottleneck now at Brighton, why did a platform at Preston Park have its tracks lifted a few years ago, meaning any southbound train now has to wait for any Preston Park stopper in front of it to clear, whereas the P.P. stoppers used to be put into the eastern platform to allow a clear path for fast (and Hove) trains?

Graham H
19 January 2016 at 20:09

@Dr Richards Beeching – sorry, I should have been clearer : there isn’t – so far as I know – now a bottleneck at Brighton but if the rest of the line was fettled up to deliver more tph (and even more so, were BML2 to be built) then I can imagine that one might run out of throat/platform capacity – but that would come at the end of the upgrade process, almost by definition, which is why I put it last.

Sad Fat Dad
19 January 2016 at 20:14

@Graham H

An alternative version of the list of capacity issues on the main (fast) lines from Victoria / London Bridge might read:

@kate
“Over the years some of the long-distance franchises have been unpopular. Virgin went through a very dodgy patch on WCML before getting things into some sort of even keel. National Express were stripped of ECML in 2009.But the key commuter routes carry vastly more passengers.”

There is another important difference – most long-distance franchise passengers are “optional” – many can go by car, or fly, or not travel at all, choose to go on holiday somewhere else, or (on some routes) choose different TOC. On commuter routes, the passengers (victims!) have no choice, so the operator has little incentive to make itself popular. If you already have 100% of a market, there is no incentive to attract more customers, and if it is a captive market, no risk of losing the ones you’ve got.

100andthirty
19 January 2016 at 21:01

Timbeau…. a couple of quick points…..

I thought National Express handed back the EC franchise.

Also GTR is not a franchise, it is a management contract.

GTR Driver
19 January 2016 at 21:02

SFD, add build more berthing space for the extra stock(!)

timbeau
19 January 2016 at 21:09

@130
“I thought National Express handed back the EC franchise.”
They did – but it wasn’t me who said it was taken off them.

Anonymously
19 January 2016 at 21:15

@timbeau….But commuters have a choice as well, don’t they, depending on where they live and where their workplace is (not to mention their wealth, mobility etc.)? Principally the private car, but also bus/tram and cycling, to name a few others.

Agree that for a large urban area such as London where most commuter traffic is to the centre of town, the vast majority will travel in by train and/or metro. I’m just highlighting the point that claiming the TOCs (or TfL, for that matter) have close to 100% of the London commuter marker between them is overly simplistic.

Anonymously
19 January 2016 at 21:18

Plus there is always a ‘tipping point’ where one mode of transport becomes far more attractive to use for a commuter over another, depending on many different competing factors. The example of many US cities, where many people switched to the private car from public transport even for commuting into urban centres (such as Los Angeles) springs to mind.

timbeau
19 January 2016 at 21:48

@anonymously
“But commuters have a choice as well, don’t they, depending on where they live and where their workplace is (not to mention their wealth, mobility etc.)? Principally the private car, but also bus/tram and cycling, to name a few others.”

Just no – really no.
Very few people commuting into London by rail have any choice – nowhere to park a car. From here would require at least two buses and take four times as long, and most of us are not fit enough or brave enough to cycle that far, and the next river bus to central London is after Easter and even when it does run the first boat leaves here at 2pm and the last one back is at noon! Once you get beyond the GLA boundary the options get even worse.
And as I’ve both lived here and worked for the same employer since 1992, I didn’t choose to use the TOC I am now lumbered with.

Sad Fat Dad
19 January 2016 at 22:02

@100andthirty
GTR is very definitely a franchise, with a franchise contract. It just doesn’t retain the revenue it generates.

@timbeau
Every commuter has a choice. The fact that the alternatives take longer / cost more / require a level of fitness not currently possessed, does not mean there isn’t the choice.

People use the train because *in their personal circumstances* it is the best mix of cost / time / quality compared to the alternatives. If it wasn’t, then surely they would use an alternative?

Graham H
19 January 2016 at 22:10

@SFD – I prefer your list to mine -or better, there are items on both which suggest an amalgamation of the two – plus GTR’s point about stabling. What does emerge, however,is that nearly all the necessary works are already done/planned, apart from Balcombe and Brighton itself, which would come at the end as a consequence.

Whether you then cash the cheque in terms of capacity or reliability is – Kate – something of a false dichotomy:there may well be elements of both,although all the financial and political pressure will be for capacity – and the list of works already in the pipeline is likely to release a lot of that.

@Anonymously -whilst the “tipping point” is a wellknown phenomenon, it doesn’t seem likely something London would or could face: the modal split for travel to the CAZ has been about 9:1 in favour of public transport for many decades now. One of the important reasons for that is that the CAZ street grid hasn’t changed significantly for 200 years. One of the more entertaining “statistics” that emerged in the ’80s was that for travel to central London to be entirely car-based, you would need to cover the entire area in multi-story car parks 6 floors deep. The problem faced by LA, and places like Joburg for example, has been the collapse of the traditional CAZ, which at once renders the existing public transport infrastructure useless. However, in all the cases I have come across, that is a reflexion of loose/non-existant planning policies. Difficult to imagine a policy in which London was allowed collapse into a Los Angelino spread from,say,the south coast to the Severn estuary and the Trent valley…

Sad Fat Dad
19 January 2016 at 22:18

@Graham H; agreed.

In part I was making the point, perhaps a little obliquely, that the two track section from Balcombe Tunnel Jn to Copyhold Jn doesn’t even make the list of capacity constraints at present. When it does, that would be the time to start thinking about how it gets resolved, but there’s a lot on the ‘to do’ list before that.

Anonymously
19 January 2016 at 22:24

@timbeau…There are places to park your car if either (a) your employer provides one for you or (b) you’re wealthy enough to pay for a space in a car park somewhere. Then it becomes a case of whether one can afford the fuel cost, congestion charge and journey time (which may or may not be longer, depending on the route taken). If all of the London ringways and associated arterial roads had been built as planned (I’m not for one moment suggesting this was a good idea!!!), then I suppose many more of us would opt to commute using our cars, resulting in a large amount of car park provision in the central area to accommodate them (which is pretty much what happened in many American cities).

I guess what you are referring to is an *enforced* choice to commute by train using a particular TOC to a certain location, which is ultimately driven by one’s personal wealth, and one’s ‘choice’ of where to live and their location of employment. And I can think of multiple examples amongst people that I know who have moved home or changed jobs so they can modify how they commute to work.

So I guess what I’m saying is that you do, in fact, have a choice…..it’s just that your decision to commute using your local despised TOC is perhaps the least worst choice, given your options and circumstances (of which I have no knowledge).

MikeP
19 January 2016 at 22:25

Southern management: It starts from the top. It’s significant that TSGN now has SouthEastern’s former MD, and SouthEastern have Southern’s former one, GoVia having played musical chairs in 2014 when those 2 franchises were extended/awarded.
I’d be the last to praise either organisation, but it seems to me that at the worst, TSGN has bombed further and faster than SouthEastern.

timbeau
19 January 2016 at 22:28

@SFD
“The fact that the alternatives take longer / cost more / require a level of fitness not currently possessed, does not mean there isn’t the choice.”

On the contrary, if the alternative takes longer it may make it impossible – for example – I would not have been able to work full time and take the children to and from school if my journey was any slower.
– cost – I could hire a helicopter, but it would cost more than I get paid
– fitness “not currently possessed”? No amount of exercise will allow someone with common conditions like arthritis or osteoporosis to get to the point where a daily thirty mile round cycle trip is a realistic proposition.
So as moving closer to London is economically out of the question with the current housing market, our only choice is using the local TOC – or giving up work.

MikeP
19 January 2016 at 22:29

Sorry – got that wrong. David Statham came to SouthEastern from FCC, not Southern. Not sure how that leaves my argument 🙂

Anonymously
19 January 2016 at 22:35

@Graham H…Ah, yes, I should have taken into account the effect of surburban flight on urban development and transport provision in the US. Given our population density, it would have been near-impossible to replicate this model in London without widespread demolition (the Luftwaffe were only partially successful in this regard).

Mind you, something similar did happen in London (hence why it’s population fell by nearly 2 million between the 1940s and 1980s)….it’s just that everyone who didn’t want to live in the London area just moved further out into the Home Counties or to the surrounding new towns!

timbeau
19 January 2016 at 22:35

@anonymously
“it’s just that your decision to commute using your local despised TOC is perhaps the least worst choice”
All right, I could move house (and children’s schools, local connections, etc) to get away from them, but given the musical chairs of franchises the words “frying pan” and “fire” come to mind.

Walthamstow Writer
19 January 2016 at 22:59

@ Graham F / Anonymously – my sense of things as a very irregular user of Southern was that prior to TSGN appearing they were reasonably competent and their reputation certainly wasn’t as dire as it now seems. It is interesting that several people here, with more experience of the service than me, have said broadly the same thing. I have my own “pet theory” as to why TSGN is as awful as it is but it’s not proveable nor really repeatable here. I can understand the theory behind the creation of TSGN but the result so far is dreadful.

Anonymously
19 January 2016 at 23:45

@WW…Oh go on; tell us your pet theory if you can so long as it doesn’t breach house rules ?….

Walthamstow Writer
19 January 2016 at 23:49

@ Anonymously – sorry, no. I think it would breach house rules so it’s not going to appear.

Graham Feakins
20 January 2016 at 01:25

@WW – In that case, all I can do is await the expected ‘short’ forum within the next couple of months and then the usual day-long forum which at least Southern had planned this summer. I amplify what I said about these, in that Southern (and hopefully now TSGN) gave a series of presentations during the day by their managers in various disciplines and widely-ranging topics, each allowing for many Q&A’s. They also included at least one each time from Network Rail. With a Southern or NR representative on each table and add to that the lunch break and so on, there was ample time for one-to-one contact. Even more important was that Southern made note of comments from the audience and took them away for consideration, with the whole proceedings being recorded and transcribed. In many cases, the results of comments by those attending could later be seen because those forums were for as just as much benefit to Southern as they were for their passengers.

I can only hope and trust that the next ones will be held and that they will be as open to exchange of views as the Southern ones have been in the past.

Graham Feakins
20 January 2016 at 03:29

@Purley Dweller – “The merger has been an absolute disaster in customer service terms. Southern were never perfect but they usually sorted out the issues.”

As you may realise from my comments above, Southern never admitted they were perfect and that’s why they organised those forums both to find out what was going wrong that they had missed, whilst also involving Network Rail because of course several problems were not Southern’s fault but emanated from NR one way or another. The fact that Southern could persuade NR to come and talk knowledgeably in front of a crowd of possibly hostile Southern user representatives was brave indeed but it worked. Unlike politicians who have a tendency to disappear immediately after presenting their blurb, NR and Southern stayed on to listen, answer and learn. That’s what makes these forums so valuable.

The result is that the user group representatives who attend can usually* feed back positive news to others even if not everything is hunky dory at the moment.

* There’s one LR commentator who may well be a member of the Redhill group of users and receives rather less positive news and so is understandably perhaps not so enamoured with Southern, no matter how hard they try to resolve conflicting requirements. It would be great, though, if all could be sorted out in the end, says Graham, hopefully.

quinlet
20 January 2016 at 09:14

@Anonymously
The shift of population and jobs away from London between the 1940s and the 1980s was a deliberate policy of Governments which saw this as a way of both improving housing standards and reducing congestion in London. The favoured mechanism for this was through new towns but these turned out to be unsuccessful in their main aim in that while large amounts of housing were built, not enough jobs moved out of London, and certainly not enough of the right jobs. This resulted in a far higher level of commuting back into London than had been anticipated or desired. Even as late as the 1970s, an initial decision was made that Milton Keynes didn’t need a railway station of its own because Bletchley and Wolverton would be entirely sufficient. The somewhat belated recognition in the 1980s that this policy was flawed becasue of the already apparrent congestion on longer distance commuter services and the need to regenerate inner London resulted in a policy U turn.

It is worth noting, though, that green belt has performed a huge service in preventing the LA type suburban sprawl around London. It’s worth noting that policies now are firmly on the side of accommodating London’s rapid population growth by increasing residential densities – in some cases doubling them – rather than spreading outwards. This will, of course, only increase rail’s stranglehold on commuters. Only 5% of journeys to work in central London now come by car!

Graham H
20 January 2016 at 10:16

@quinlet – Indeed; the other – and fundamental – failure of the New Towns programme was the planners’ assumption that they would be selfcontained. I suspect this is what lay behind the initial omission of a station at MK (and was certainly “gospel” amongst MKDC staff at the time I was dealing with them – in the early ’70s). Of course, surprise, surprise, people have located their homes in different places to their work, according to a whole variety of factors and the the new towns are no different from any other in that respect. In fact, purely in terms of commuting patterns,in NSE we could detect no difference between, say Hertford and Stevenage, or Hemel and S Albans.

The thing is that only London, and perhaps Manchester and Leeds, is able to offer a pretty full range of employment types and a choice of employers within each sector, so many families with more than one breadwinner working in different sectors (the norm today, as it was not when the new towns were being set up) are pulled in that direction.

Malcolm
20 January 2016 at 10:29

On the abstract question of whether commuters have a choice. Even if some commuters, possibly even most, have no realistic alternative, the local TOC cannot be said to have a ‘proper’ monopoly. This is because some of the users can choose (say to cycle, or car+cycle or whatever). So there may be some (rather theoretical) point in the TOC being nice to its users, so as to encourage these people onto the trains. (I say theoretical, because it is unlikely that an extra peak hour commuter contributes positively to the financial bottom line: the TOC would do better trying to encourage off-peak, or even shoulder traffic).

There may also be long-term benefits in being nice, even to a captive audience, when it comes to franchise retention, if the awarders take any notice of passenger opinions. Also, the TOC may just have nice people working for it, who want to please their customers regardless of any financial pressures.

RayL
20 January 2016 at 10:29

@Quinlet 0914 “It’s worth noting that policies now are firmly on the side of accommodating London’s rapid population growth by increasing residential densities – in some cases doubling them – rather than spreading outwards.”

Alas, if only it were so. There is currently a government ‘consultation’ that seeks to nibble away at the Green Belts (there are others apart from London) by making changes to the NPPF (National Planning Policy Framework). Without the Metropolitan Green Belt, and if London had been allowed to spread in the way that, say, Los Angeles has been allowed to spread, then we would probably have houses, and certainly ribbon development, all the way from Cambridge to Brighton and Oxford to Southend.

Is there still any enthusiasm for selling off supposedly ‘redundant’ railway land along the BML and it’s linking lines? I ask because I see (for example) a useful stabling area (enough for several 12-car trains) north and south of the new Tennison Road bridge (OK, separated by the main lines from the Selhurst stabling, but would that matter?). Or the wedge of land next to Oakfield Road which could allow expansion of West Croydon Station?

100andthirty
20 January 2016 at 14:06

@SFD

Based on the original announcement – press release largely regurgitated by Railway Gazette – it is a franchise styled as a management contract.

It is also sobering to compare the views of the users today, as represented by correspondants above, with the ambitions described in the RG article. They are poles apart.

IslandDweller
20 January 2016 at 15:50

Anonymously on 19 Jan at 2224
“and journey time (which may or may not be longer, depending on the route taken)”
This is the sort of pure theoretical nonsense that used to drive me insane in my university lectures. Traffic conditions are just so dreadful across south London that the choice (which you claim exists) is a chimera. For the vast majority of commuters, train is the only option – even despite TSGN.

GTR Driver
20 January 2016 at 20:53

Ray L, placing sidings where you describe would I think be possible but it does create a new set of problems:

– Opposition from the new housing next to it
– Vandalism from the new housing next to it
– how to get drivers to the sidings. Only way in would be by footbridge (expensive) or staff halt (time consuming = means more drivers need to be recruited and creates delays for the trains stopping at the staff halt).
– how to get the trains out on to the main line. And back. It can only be done by creating a new conflict and bottleneck on an already congested bit of the network

AlisonW
20 January 2016 at 21:02

Something wrong ‘up there’ …

post order:
timbeau – 19 January 2016 at 22:35
Malcolm – 20 January 2016 at 10:29
Walthamstow Writer – 19 January 2016 at 22:59
Anonymously – 19 January 2016 at 23:45
—
[ Well spotted. The time I commented is correct, the order in which it is being shown is not. I think I know why, but I will not try to rectify it, for fear of messing up something else. Malcolm]

Re commuters having a choice, isn’t one factor involved that people no longer expect to have, or indeed do have, jobs for life? Plus companies move offices, usually without getting permission from their staff*

quinlet: yes, sprawl _was_ stopped by the green belt around London and other major cities, but now there seems to be a lot of media pressure building to build there. A sadness, in my opinion, as the belt does at least help the air quality issue somewhat.

RayL: selling “redundant” railway land will, with absolute certainty, lead to someone then realising that with all the new build housing that land would have made a perfect site for a new station to serve those new residents. “Planning”, huh?

* experienced this myself too many times, in once case jumping 15 miles.

quinlet
20 January 2016 at 21:51

@RayL, AlisonW
Indeed there are pressures to nibble – or even gobble – away at green belt. A lot of developers want this because building on greenfield sites is far cheaper and easier than building higher density on brownfield sites. Once the principle has been established, the local councils in green belt are also, generally, easier to deal with than some of the battle hardened London boroughs. But the political support for greenbelt is still very strong with lots of local support.

Given the growth in London – it’s currently growing by a city the size of Leeds every year – the current plans for building in greenbelt won’t start to touch the problem and hence, whatever additional building is allowed there, the main way of satisfying London’s increasing housing demand will be via densification. Note, in particular, last week’s announcement from the PM about rebuilding housing estates. While presented as a social benefit, the real attraction is a doubling of the housing densities on those sites.

Walthamstow Writer
21 January 2016 at 00:10

@ Alison W – one of my concerns about the dash to build on “publicly owned land” is the risk of completely wrecking the possibility to later expand services whether transport, fire, police or health services. We also have the pressure to convert “unused” (i.e. potentially cheap) office space into dwellings which will bring a load of transport and business pressures in its wake. The housing issue is obviously serious but there is too much risk of “panic” from politicians who are desperate to “do something” thus screwing up the future.

@ Quinlet – the issue remains that if you densify vast areas of London what you densifying with? Will the new developments be even remotely affordable for anyone earning average salaries? If not then we are not solving anything really and we are storing up further transport problems. I also suspect that increasing building on the green belt will create enormous transport problems because you’re likely to be beyond TfL’s operational area so bus transport will be non existent and main line trains, already overloaded, will be under more pressure. This extra demand will then just make it even harder for those trains to pick up anyone within Greater London and then terminals become more overloaded with all the consequences for the tube network that flows from that. You might be lucky and be able to channel some extra transport capacity but I have to say I’m sceptical that our planning processes could do that in any sensible way.

quinlet
21 January 2016 at 09:04

@WW
The thread on the Bakerloo line extension shows how the planning system as a whole is looking to ensure transport connections are funded through and for housing developments and the Crossrail station at Woolwich came about in a similar way and is fudned by house builders (at least to a significant extent).

More generally the issue of ensuring new housing is within the means of average people is an important issue. The conventional approach has been to require developers to include a certain amount (up to 50%) of social housing. However, developers have objected (because it reduces their profits) and the current Government has listened to that point of view. As a result other methods are being used such as a requirement for so much ‘affordable’ housing (less than 80% of market value) or ‘starter’ homes where in both cases the emphasis is on ownership rather than renting. This does raise wider questions of housing tenure and affordability which I suspect are well outside the scope of this thread.

Graham H
21 January 2016 at 09:08

@WW – but is there any form of development (extensive or intensive) within commuting distance of London which can provide affordable housing? Probably not,if left to market forces. [Of course, your freemarketeer would then argue that that is what should happen and “London” will find a new equilibrium; so it might over many decades and the price of Angelino spread. ]

Greg Tingey
21 January 2016 at 09:43

GH & others
Not “just” MK – the delightful resort of Basildon (shudder) didn’t have a station for many years, the locals having to use Laindon & Pitsea, instead.
Then there’s Skelmersdale – no, let’s not go there, either ….

quinlet
21 January 2016 at 09:55

I’ve heard they pay money to get out of Skelmersdale.

Graham H
21 January 2016 at 10:10

@Greg T – in my days in New Towns Directorate in DoE, I had to visit all the towns*, prior to their sale. Skem was by far the worst with the fortresslike town centre all boarded up and sitting in a sea of mud. The planners responsible should have been shot.

@quinlet – I like the idea of people smugglers operating out of Skem.

Nearer to topic,stations were something of a rarity in new towns (unless there was one already on site) – it’s this point about being self-contained – and no effort had been made to locate the towns specifically on a “useful” railway line.

*We had some difficulty finding CLNT at all and MK was still a clutch of isolated estates at the time (this was deliberate policy by the Development Corporation: by starting the town at the corners, as it were, the risk of it being cancelled was much reduced – who would want a random selection of scattered housing?)

Sorry for the diversion off topic.

Anonymously
21 January 2016 at 18:12

Date of closure of Skelmersdale station – 1956
Date Skelmersdale was designated a New Town – 1961
Date of withdrawal of freight services – 1963
Date line was lifted – 1968

Shooting whoever was responsible for this ‘joined-up’ planning would be too kind to them, I think!

A couple of really good articles about the work and non-work at Purley in February’s Rail Engineer as well as other Christmas stuff.

From the article on Old Lodge Lane “Given the rarity of four track possessions on this route, the next opportunity to replace this bridge may be several years away.”

Greg Tingey
5 February 2016 at 09:41

PoP
Fascinating
So, any idea when those speed-restrictions, because of the bridge will go?
When they rebuild E Croydon – Windmill Bridge?
Rebuild of Stoat’s Nest?

Pedantic of Purley
5 February 2016 at 10:44

Greg,

Stoat’s Nest Junction was relaid in Chistmas 2013. Rail Engineer article here. Early days yet for even deciding whether or not to enhance with a grade separated junction – either there or in an alternative suitable location.

Greg Tingey
5 February 2016 at 12:55

I was thinking of enhancement, by means of slow-to-fast links approx where the lines cross over each other.
[ i.e. down Redhill to down Quarry & up Redhill to up Quarry ]

The current issues are:
– is it even worth doing if East Croydon/Windmill Bridge gets sorted out properly?
– if it is worth doing then in which direction do you do it?
– where would you do it?

On the second point, it always was the situation that northbound had a better case but further improvements to the Windmill Bridge junction proposal might mean the added advantage is not sufficient to justify the work.

On the third point, your suggestion is intuitively is the best place to do it but it is a mighty deep cutting. When I eventually get around to covering this I will include photos to illustrate the point.

Note that initially there is no plan to do it in both directions.

T33
8 February 2016 at 20:19

As a Redhill Route passenger I’m very keen that Stoats Nest flyover gets done. Obviously I would say that, but the deterioration of reliability the Redhill services and extension of journey times as our services have gradually all got moved to the slow line because of the “timing risk” of crossing at Stoats Nest is very frustrating.

Our services cannot keep time between East Croydon and Coulsdon South especially in the peak due to all the flat crossings (Windmill Bridge (Fast to Slow), East Grinstead lines at South Croydon, Caterham/Tattenham Lines at Purley). So for us the need for Stoats Nest flyover is very urgent. Evening Peak PPM is below 20% now.

T33
20 March 2016 at 13:30

To add to the demise of Redhill station the Platform 0 works planned for next year have been significantly reduced.

The main change is that instead of 4 through platforms there will now be just 3 and the current platform 1 will be truncated at the North end and become a bay platform only.

Additionally the extra point work to allow trains in normal operation to access Platform 2 southbound (currently they need to use about a mile of Northbound track to access platform 1 or 2) has been removed from the scheme.

This will mean the operational inflexibility around Southbound trains will remain, as will the queues of southbound trains delayed by issues splitting trains in the pm peak.

Also the average of 500 passengers for northbound trains in the morning peak will be standing on a platform (0) with limited facilities (two waiting rooms, no toilets, no coffee shop, no customer information staff, etc.) in the pouring rain with no shelter. Not to mention the crush being forced through the subway when late platform change is made (as often happens at Redhill)

Anomnibus
20 March 2016 at 21:52

Given the subject of this series, here’s a cab view video showing what the Thameslink route from Blackfriars to Brighton was like back in 2011, viewed from the driver’s cab. Blackfriars, the Shard, and the new viaduct near London Bridge, were still under construction at the time. (Sadly, East Croydon itself is missing: you can see the tower blocks in the distance as the train approaches past Selhurst Depot, then the video skips ahead to a little south of Purley Oaks.)

Note the length of the ramp down to the London Bridge lines from Blackfriars. This gives a rough idea of how long ramps need to be for flyovers and dive-unders. A similar flyover can be seen between Sydenham and Penge West, where the Crystal Palace branch diverges. The maze of junctions surrounding Selhurst Depot, just after Norwood Junction, are also indicative of the kind of structures full grade separation involves.

With regard to the posts immediately above this, the approach to Purley starts roughly here. Stoats Nest Junction is a little beyond the station, roughly at the point where you see the Tattenham Corner branch line re-appearing briefly on the right before heading away for the last time.

The train in the video follows the Quarry Lines (i.e. fast lines) route, and the two routes can be seen diverging gradually just after that junction.

The video also shows just how deceptive Google Maps can be: you really don’t get a clear idea of just how hilly the terrain is when viewed from above. For reference, Here is a Google Maps link showing Stoats Nest Junction. Note the stretch to the south towards the tunnels and compare with the video.

Walthamstow Writer
21 March 2016 at 18:54

@ Anomnibus – if nothing else that video gives a text book explanation as to the issues that the London Bridge works are trying to fix. The section from Blackfriars to New Cross Gate is fascinating and frustrating (waiting at signals) in equal measure.

Anomnibus
21 March 2016 at 20:48

@WW:

It also explains why even the short Bakerloo extension to Lewisham would make a vast difference, despite not being that much longer than the Battersea extension of the Northern Line.

ThisbeRich
12 July 2016 at 12:12

I wonder if there’s ever scope to replace the slow crossovers with express points futher north, near Purley Oaks? Then your fast Caterham/TC trains can switch at say 50/60mph onto the slow lines without holding the traffic up too much.

That or make all slow services via Redhill call at South Croydon/Purley Oaks. That way you wouldn’t have the need for services calling at Purley then transferring over to the fast lines.

Purley Dweller
25 September 2016 at 16:03

The cancelled bridge replacement will now take place in two parts. 3rd and 4th December and 25th and 26th December. Old Lodge Lane closed from 21st November till 9th January. We had a residents letter through today. I will try to remember to get some photos.

Walthamstow Writer
25 September 2016 at 23:02

@ Purley Dweller – I wonder if Network Rail have procured the services of someone who can “control the wind and weather” to avoid another cancellation of the work?

ngh
25 September 2016 at 23:41

Re WW,

“Luck” eventually has to go their way…

The bridge had a big strike just over month ago so plenty of incentive to replace sooner rather than later before speed restrictions over it get worse if there is more damage or general degradation.

T33
26 September 2016 at 21:29

Buses already in place

No train services Redhill to Purley – 25/6 November and 3/4 December

No Train services Purley to Gatwick via Redhill on Sunday 11th December

17/18 December to be announced next week I’d guess

T33
16 October 2016 at 15:18

Have a full list from GTR now

“26/27 Nov: Buses Redhill to Purley
3/4 Dec: Buses Redhill to Purley
Sat 10 Dec: open
Sun 11 Dec: Buses Purley to Horley
Sat 17 Dec: open
Sun 18 Dec: open after 0745
Sat 24 Dec: open with Xmas eve early shut down
This appears to be a mix of platform prep works and also the Old Lodge Lane works”